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Vigor Gaming's Force Recon BT offers gamers solid all-around performance, and at $4000 with a display (as of 8/8/08), the Force Recon BT is a great value for a gaming PC.
It features an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 processor running at 3.2 GHz, along with 2GB of DDR3 memory and 1.6 terabytes of overall storage, plus Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled. The $4000 price includes a bundled 22-inch Viewsonic VG2230wm; if you already have a display, the stand-alone system without a monitor runs for $3700. The PC comes bundled with Logitech's high-end G15 gaming keyboard and G5 mouse, as well.
The Force Recon BT ships with a three-year parts and labor warranty and lifetime telephone support--a plus. Oddly enough, while Vigor includes manuals for many of the components as well as the standard suite of system-restore disks, the Force Recon BT does not ship with a system manual.
Inside the case, the Force Recon BT offers a good amount of expandability with its two PCI slots and five PCI Express slots. The interior is generally well organized, but the layout needs improvement. The graphics system obstructs two card slots. One of the rails supporting the power sits in the way of the external drive bays; you'll need a screwdriver to remove the offending rail. Also, I noticed that our test unit was missing a couple of drive-bay trays.
The Force Recon BT provides plenty of ports, including eight USB, two eSATA, and two FireWire ports. Two USB ports, a headphone jack, and a microphone jack reside on the top of the case for easy access--the exact placement could be better, though, as the ports sit close to the center of the case top, which might be difficult for you to reach when the system is under a desk.
Compared with the test results from other gaming machines, the Force Recon's numbers won't blow anyone away. That said, it held its own in overall performance, with a WorldBench 6 score of 127. The computer's dual ATI Radeon HD380 graphics processors and 512MB of video memory yielded good (but not amazing) graphics performance in comparison with other gaming systems we've tested.
Though serious gamers likely won't be in awe of the Force Recon BT, Vigor has put together a respectable all-around gaming system.
