Building the Ultimate Gaming System III

Alienware Area-51 5550
www.alienware.com
Alienware used to be considered the sports car of computers- shiny case, expensive methods, hand-built, burn-in, benchmark testing, the works. They even come up with miscellaneous bonuses, such as AlienGUIse and the really popular Alienware tech support. Of course, they, like Falcon Northwest, realized that no-one wanted to pay $5000 for a computer, and broke down the systems into many different groups, each very well for the category. Alienware's becoming the new Dell or Gateway, so even if a computer in their category sucks, I'm still going to watch them. (PS: I'm trying to be unbiased about this, but I just purchased a 5550 a week ago to replace my destroyed laptop. While I haven?t gotten it yet, I will review it when I receive it.)

This Alienware system is probably the best for your cash available. One very important thing to note here is the price is with the $750 discount going on, so the actual price may vary when anyone would build this same system.

Okay, now for why I made such a gross guess as being best for the cash available. First off, the card is an ATI x850 Platinum Edition, the best video card available from ATI. Another thing to note is that the processor is an Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.6, with 2 mbs cache instead of the traditional 1, also with a 64 bit architecture. Overall the Extreme Editions usually run level with higher Athlon64s in gaming, which is surprising, because usually Athlon64s best Intels in gaming, whereas Intels usually best Athlons in other computer work, such as encoding.

However, this computer isnt for everyone. Most computers like this tend to be too big for the common consumer. Lets look at a Small Form Factor PC for you neatfreaks out there, or you college guys who can't convince your roommate to suck it up.



Shuttle P 9500g
us.shuttle.com
Shuttle makes Small Form Factor computers, or SFFs. SFFs are perfect for college students in dorms, people in offices or cubicles, or anyone paranoid of using up too much desk space. Its the same theory as having a LCD screen: Its small. However, just like LCDs, it comes with its own bundle of problems- namely, SFFs tend to get hot, like laptops, and could possibly overheat. However, Shuttle has some serious cooling system power behind this, so (or so they claim), it cools the system just fine.

As for the build, I'm marginally impressed. The sound card is external, which is stupid, but it also includes headphones, so I suppose the card isn?t required. However, it seems to make up for it with a 6800 Ultra, which is a damn fine Video card for such a small system. Overall, I'd say this is a great computer for a dorm roomie or office junkie, bit it just doesnt pack the punch that your typical gamer needs.



Voodoo Rage
www.voodoopc.com
Voodoo is like the retarded brother of the big 3 fancy computer companies (Alienware,F-NW,and Voodoo). While good brothers Alienware and F-NW went and made some PCs for the common man, Voodoo still seems to think that your normal gamer carries around a few thousand dollars in pocket cash.

However, there's some reasoning behind the price. Instead of giving you a choice, most if not all Voodoo PCs are water-cooled as opposed to the famous yet infamous fan cooling. Water cooling is completely silent, slightly more effective, and did I mention VERY VERY EXPENSIVE?

Regardless, If you look at the price to parts ratio, this is a horrible computer to buy at this price range. The site says it right: Luxury Entertainment Systems. I would never buy one of these unless someone handed me $10,000 and asked me to buy a PC with it- and even then, I might want to spend more on accessories. Bottom Line: This PC choice sucks unless you're rich or extremely stupid. Who needs a house or car, anyway?

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