WHAT'S HOT: At first glance, the Millennia XP+ Xtreme appears to be a rather standard entry from MicronPC. It's packaged in a basic blue-and-beige midsize tower, with a flip-up drive cover and two front USB 1.1 ports. But beneath the surface, this Millennia XP+ proved to be a powerful media authoring and gaming system with capabilities that are well above those of the average PC. Configured with a 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, 512MB of DDR memory, and Windows XP Home, the Millennia XP+ earned an admirable score of 123 on our PC WorldBench 4 tests--the same as an Alienware Aurora DDR with an Athlon XP 2200+ CPU and a much higher price tag.

Our test system came with MicronPC's 19-inch 910ex monitor, a sharp display that produced crisp, readable text in our test document and realistic flesh tones and rich colors in our test photo (MicronPC now bundles its CM900 monitor). The system's horsepower is nicely complemented by a Pioneer DVR-103 DVD-RW drive, and a 120GB hard drive--the capacity needed for storing music, photos, and video. An add-in card provides two FireWire ports on the rear of the system, and the included Pinnacle Studio 7 SE movie-making software ties it all together.

With a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4600-based graphics card, our Millennia posted high scores for game performance at all of our test resolutions.

Documentation includes a thick overall manual for the Millennia line with lots of illustrations and detailed chapters on troubleshooting, upgrading, and BIOS setup. Micron also provides a manual that covers the case tower and a system setup guide.

WHAT'S NOT: Our only gripes: During DVD movie playback, we noticed some minor pixelation of the image, which also appeared somewhat washed out. Also, having the FireWire ports located on the rear of the system means reaching around to plug in DV camcorders. Otherwise, we couldn't find any significant complaints.

WHAT ELSE: With ample expansion room and tool-less components, the Millennia XP+ is well designed for quick repairs and upgrades. After loosening a thumbscrew and pressing two green buttons, the aluminum-lined plastic side panel pops off. The interior of our sample Millennia had neatly bundled cables, three open PCI slots and five open drive bays (three for removable media drives). A cover for the PCI slots pops up with some thumb pressure and the external drives can be mounted on the included green rails to then slide in and out the front of the system.

UPSHOT: Well priced for its configuration, the MicronPC Millennia XP+ Xtreme delivers great performance for gaming, media authoring, and multimedia playback.