WHAT'S HOT: Falcon Northwest's decked-out Mach V Athlon 2000 will play games, DVD movies, and crunch numbers with the best of them. Our test system included a 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, 1GB of DDR memory, and a total of 80GB of storage space on two hard drives (which the system addresses as one fast drive thanks to the system's Ultra ATA RAID controller). It's not surprising that it nailed a PC WorldBench 4 score of 126, the highest we've recorded for a system running Windows XP Home edition. That's 5 percent higher than its nearest competitor, a Xi Computer 1800+ MTower SP running a 1.53-GHz Athlon XP 1800+ CPU with 512MB of DDR RAM.

The Falcon's audiovisual components are equally impressive. Its 22-inch ViewSonic P225f CRT monitor-a past Best Buy on our Top 10 Monitors chart--delivered crisp, readable text at 1600 by 1200 resolution, as well as rich colors and natural flesh tones in our test photograph. Games played smoothly, even at our highest test resolutions of 1600 by 1200, due in part to VisionTek's Xtasy GeForce3 Ti500 graphics board.

Setting up the six-speaker Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speaker set and the Hercules Game Theater XP sound card and breakout box takes time and patience, but the reward is beautiful sound, with heavenly treble and booming bass. The sound is equally impressive whether you're listening to music or playing a DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

WHAT'S NOT: Sticker shock is an understatement. Shelling out $3989 to bring this PC home may feel a bit like having your pocket picked.

WHAT ELSE: You can open the flat-front aluminum midsize tower case by loosening two thumbscrews at the rear of the side panel. Though somewhat flimsy, the aluminum side snaps off and goes back on with little effort.

Our Mach V had only one open PCI slot, though given the machine's configuration, there's not much more you'd need to add. In any case, adding another card is not easy. There are individual thumbscrews on the PCI slots, but you can't reach them because of the case design; a side support blocks access. Falcon cut a hole in the support that allows a screwdriver to reach the thumbscrews.

With the interior cabling neatly bundled and pulled back, there is plenty of room to reach the drive bays. Even with a 16X DVD-ROM drive, a 24X/10X/40X Plextor CD-RW drive, and twin RAID hard drives, there are still six open drive bays (three for removable media drives and three for hard drives).

Falcon includes all the documentation for individual components as well as a binder with useful details on the entire system that include how to set it up, how to optimize it, and how to keep it running smoothly.

The Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro has two USB ports and 19 hot-keys for multimedia and Internet shortcuts. The keyboard is both quiet and comfortable.

UPSHOT: If you've got the cash, you'll be hard pressed to find a better entertainment system than this Mach V.

SUMMARY

Falcon Northwest Mach V Athlon 2000 PC WorldBench 4 score of 126, 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, 1024MB of DDR-266 SDRAM, Windows XP Home edition, two 40GB hard drives connected via an Ultra ATA RAID controller, 16X DVD-ROM drive, 24X/10X/40X CD-RW drive, VisionTek Xtasy 6964 graphics card with 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 22-inch ViewSonic P225f monitor, Asus A7V266 sound card, Klipsch PM V 5.1 speakers, network adapter, midsize tower case; Deus Ex, Giants software (games). One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited, 9-hour weekday toll-free tech support. $3989 888/325-2661 www.falcon-nw.com