ABS Ultimate M5

WHAT'S HOT: ABS systems are often at the top of our charts, and for good reason: They blend best-of-breed speed and top-tier components with affordable prices. One of the company's latest high-end gaming rigs, the Ultimate M5 is no exception.

Outfitted with AMD's top-of-the-line 2.2-GHz Athlon XP+ 3200 and 1GB of 400-MHz of DDR SDRAM, this tall black tower with green neon interior lights earned a blazing PC WorldBench 4 score of 140--the highest we've recorded to date, and four points (3 percent) faster than the previous speed champion, the Sys Performance 3000+.

The M5's record speed on PC WorldBench 4 was echoed by its performance on our graphics tests. Our test unit had an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics board with 128MB of RAM, and it posted fast frame rates at a demanding 1600-by-1200 resolution, placing it on a par with other top-performing graphics boards. We also saw bright, smooth DVD movie playback without skips or stutters.

ABS has thrown in an ample assortment of other features, as well: two 80GB Serial ATA hard drives connected in a 160GB RAID volume, a Sony DVD+R/RW drive, and a 16X DVD-ROM drive. Under the floppy drive is a multiformat memory-card reader that accepts CompactFlash, SD/MultiMediaCard, and SmartMedia formats. The back of the system sports four USB 2.0 and two FireWire ports.

Serious gamers will appreciate the bundled Logitech Z-680 speakers, which earned one of our World Class awards in July. This 5.1 THX-certified set consists of five satellites and a full-featured control hub; the hub has an LCD display and an auxiliary jack for connecting external sound sources such as MP3 or CD players. We also found separate inputs for rear and center speakers, making them easier to set up than other 5.1 speakers we've evaluated. When hooked up to the system's NVidia NForce2 integrated sound, the speakers and subwoofer produced thrilling rumbles during DVD movie playback and crystal-clear trebles when playing vocal music.

WHAT'S NOT: We found several minor annoyances with this system. For instance, its memory card reader slots aren't labeled, leaving you to guess which slot you should use. And inside the case, the two free PCI slots are hard to access. When upgrading add-on cards, you'll need to gingerly push aside some small wire connections. Other cables are bundled together in protective tubing, but they're stuffed inside a few of the free drive bay cages.

Unfortunately, ABS didn't include any applications with the Ultimate M5, so you'll have to spring for an office suite, games, and video editing or DVD authoring titles so you can use the recordable DVD drive.

And unlike many gaming systems, the M5's USB, FireWire, and audio ports are all located on the back of the system. Having these ports on the front makes connecting peripherals much easier, and we see front-mounted ports on most desktops these days.

WHAT ELSE: The 19-inch NEC MultiSync FE991SB CRT monitor handled our tests for text quality better than our tests for graphics. We saw crisp text at all font sizes, especially black text on white screens. Colors, however, appeared somewhat muted compared to the output of better-performing monitors.

The wireless keyboard offers eight hot-keys for launching Internet-related applications, plus separate volume-adjustment buttons. Typing on it didn't feel mushy or springy and was comfortable overall.

We were disappointed with some of ABS's documentation. The generic user manual lacks instructions for the DVD drive and memory card reader. And we found its troubleshooting and upgrading information to be somewhat sparse. Still, what's here is housed in a large yellow binder, along with recovery and driver CDs, so you'll probably be able to find them easily when you need them.

UPSHOT: In the Ultimate M5, ABS has put together a sterling set of components and coaxed record-breaking performance from them. If you're thirsting for speed, you won't go wrong with this box, but we'd still like to see better fit and finish from ABS.