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Big and Tall

Huge tower PCs certainly don't appeal to everyone, but for the person who has money to burn and space to spread out, and who wants off-the-charts performance, a big PC could be the ticket.

Large, decked-out PCs typically have several inherent advantages over small, space-saving systems or even a basic beige-box PC. Most towers tend to be huge, usually 22 inches tall by 10 inches wide by 22 inches deep. Such dimensions give them lots of room inside for massive graphics cards and the cooling apparatus required by the fastest processors, and their large motherboards can accommodate all manner of upgrades.

The Alienware Aurora Extreme, one of the tower PCs we examined, used its high-end components to blaze through our PC WorldBench 4 tests. Employing a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 FX-51 CPU and 1GB of RAM, the Aurora Extreme earned a score of 141--one of the fastest scores we've seen from any desktop PC. The other big tower we looked at, Cyberpower's Gamer Infinity 9900 Professional, used its 3.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of RAM to score 135 on PC WorldBench 4--obviously not as speedy as the Alienware system, but still quite fast nonetheless.

Both systems also turned in impressive graphics performance in our tests. The Alienware delivered 127 frames per second in the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein at 1280 by 1024 resolution and 32-bit color; the Cyberpower, 137 frames per second. Considering scores like those--some of the fastest we've seen--it's no wonder that many gamers prefer tower PCs.

But top speed might not be the only reason to consider a tower. A big box usually gives you flexibility: If your system didn't come with a FireWire port or enough USB ports, you can simply add a card that has them. Want to record television programs on your computer? Add a TV-tuner card. Gigabit ethernet? A 7.1-channel sound card? A Serial ATA adapter and dual hard drives so you can set up a RAID array? With enough expansion slots and drive bays in the system, you can upgrade at will. The ample space inside both of the big towers we looked at--three slots and two bays were empty within the Alienware and two slots and three bays were available in the Cyberpower--would allow performance-hungry owners to do almost anything with them.

On the other hand, with a smaller PC upgrading can prove nearly impossible. Getting into a small system in the first place is often quite difficult; and even if you are able to open it, a small system usually lacks the room for upgrades.

The downside to a humongous tower: Stuffing one full of powerful components usually means it will need lots of fans to keep cool. In fact, the Cyberpower system uses a total of nine fans--even for its hard drive and graphics card. And fans create noise; the Alienware and Cyberpower systems both ran quite loud.

However, the Cyberpower does offer some compensation: It includes control knobs and digital temperature gauges for two fans on the front of the case, allowing you to modulate some of the amount of air you send through the system.

Many big towers distinguish themselves with unusual designs. Both the Alienware and the Cyberpower look distinctive--for instance, both have see-through panels (a feature becoming more common on big towers, especially those aimed at gamers). The Alienware system resembles a spaceship, with silver grilles decorating each of the bottom corners and an alien face with red lit eyes adorning the top. Both computers also have lights that illuminate their fans, giving the interior of each system an eerie glow.

These super systems usually require super investments. Alienware demonstrated little restraint with the Aurora Extreme we looked at; as configured, it would cost you almost $4000, not exactly chump change when you can easily buy an unadorned basic system for less than $800. The Cyberpower Infinity 9900 Professional costs $3700. But if you're looking for the best in performance and upgradability, a tower should be for you.