Do you really need to drop $3000 to $6000 to build a solid gaming PC? Of course not. But something that even shrewd-'n-savvy homebrew PC builders dismiss too quickly is the way budget-conscious skimping on this or that component can create bottlenecks for other parts of the system. Maybe you purchased a smaller, slower hard drive instead of a 10,000-rpm performance RAID array, or maybe you bought a midgrade CPU with a stock cooler on a cheap motherboard that's a dicey overclocker.
Perhaps you chose a stripped-down 3D video card instead of its higher-powered cousin, or went with a low-end DVD burner instead of something sporting dual-layer write capabilities. Maybe you're still using a desk-crowding CRT monitor instead of a svelte wide-screen LCD, or you gambled on the included but limited one-year manufacturer's warranty for each of your components instead of purchasing a three-year, single-source coverage plan for peace of mind.
The point is, at some point down the line, what you saved in short-term compromises may cost you long-term flexibility.
The following guide highlights five recently reviewed high-ranking gaming desktops that don't compromise. They start in the $3000 range and peak at about $6000, and for each one we've included links to our ratings and our Shop & Compare pricing tool. (Pricing in this guide was current as of September 2007.)
The Quad-Core Outgunner
- PCW Rating: 86 Very Good
- Rank: #1 on PC World's Top 5 Gaming Desktop PCs chart (September 2007)
- Price as configured: $3299
- Manufacturer's home page
What your money buys you: This beast of a machine with a reasonable price outperformed more-expensive quad-core competitors. The IGE-Stacker includes Intel's 3-GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 CPU, liquid-cooled and factory-overclocked to 3.3 GHz (and covered under warranty at that speed); its frontside bus speed is a swift 1333 MHz. The machine's nForce 680i SLI-ready motherboard comes with two 1GB sticks of DDR2 RAM (plus two empty slots for expansion) and a single 768MB EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics board, and all are mounted in a cool and roomy Cooler Master Stacker 832 case.
You also get two 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drives in a performance-oriented RAID 0 array, a dual-layer DVD recorder, a bundled 22-inch wide-screen ViewSonic VX2255wmb LCD (which delivers excellent color fidelity in both still and moving images), a built-in microphone, and a 1.3-megapixel Webcam.
In our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 test suite, our review unit knocked the ball out of the park with a record-breaking score of 139. It also turned in the highest graphics scores in our Doom 3 and Far Cry performance tests.
Drawbacks: You'll have to pay another $500 to $600 to add a second GeForce 8800 GTX graphics board and take advantage of the performance-doubling power of SLI. You may also find the generic (though durable) Logitech Deluxe 250 keyboard and optical mouse underwhelming if you need extra configurable input options, and the Realtek HD integrated audio can be a frame-rate buster--you'll want to consider adding a dedicated PCI audio card.
Bottom Line: The Xi MTower IGE-Stacker is an overclocked, relatively low-priced dual-core system that outguns pricier quad-core systems.
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