ABS Ultimate X9

Images looked great, too: The bundled 19-inch NEC 90GX2 LCD monitor produced good color and smooth motion on our test games and DVD movies. In addition, it accurately reproduced the dark, gloomy look of games like Doom 3.

To keep its overclocked processor cool, ABS introduced a large water-cooling system that dominates the interior of the Ultimate X9's case. While the cables inside the case are tidily tucked away, the water pipes running through the case interior take up a lot of space and make the system's innards look messy. The water-cooling system limits expansion options, too, since the pump, reservoir (which holds the water that carries the heat away from the processor), and associated pipes block all of the vacant externally accessible drive bays (making it a moot point that the system's big chassis is designed to house up to seven externally accessible drives). Two large, noisy fans on the case vent hot air from the other components, so the quiet advantages of water cooling are lost.

The water-cooling system isn't the only impediment to future expansion. The X9's two large graphics cards block the open PCI Express slots, leaving only one vacant PCI slot accessible. The water pipes run through two holes in the case to the radiator on the back, which makes reaching the USB 2.0 and other ports on the back rather awkward.

The system sets aside four internal bays for hard drives. Two of those drive bays were occupied in our test system by twin 150GB Western Digital Raptor drives in a 300GB striped RAID array. A dual-layer DVD burner and a DVD-ROM drive occupied two of the externally accessible drive bays.

The bundled Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse were comfortable to use. The keyboard has a number of programmable and media control keys, as well as a convenient dial for controlling the sound volume.

The overclocking that makes this system so fast falls outside Intel's specification for the processor; but ABS told us that, since it did the overclocking, it will replace the processor if it fails within the standard one-year warranty period (this guarantee isn't applicable to customers who do their own overclocking).

At $4199 (as of July 13, 2006), this is one of the most expensive systems we've seen. That's a considerable investment, but it fetches the fastest system we've seen yet.

Richard Baguley