Reviewed on February 26, 2008With its second full-fledged gaming PC, Dell shows that it understands the mainstream gaming desktop as well as the high-end. The Dell XPS 630 delivers everything a gamer would want in a sub-$2,000 PC, from its components, to its case, to its powerful software. We've seen no better system in this newly competitive category.TAGS:Velocity Micro, quad-core, Dell XPS, Intel Core 2 Duo, CPU, Gateway Inc., dual-core, video card, games, Intel
Reviewed on February 21, 2008Maingear's Ephex combines aggressive overclocking and a refined sense of what gamers want in a high-end PC. Crysis remains a challenge for even a top-of-the-line PC like this one, but if you can get past that hitch (and the multi-thousand-dollar price tag), we'd recommend this system in a second.TAGS:Maingear, Crysis, Radeon, ATI Technologies, video card, hard drive, Intel, games, PC, Microsoft Windows
Reviewed on July 20, 2006You'll want to give Shuttle's new AMD-based, small-form-factor gaming PC a week or two to see how the coming Athlon price drop will affect the price tag. Assuming that Shuttle continues its aggressive pricing, however, the XPC P2 2700 will deliver lots of bang for your buck.TAGS:Maingear, Intel Core 2 Duo, media card reader, AMD, AMD Athlon, Nvidia GeForce, video card, pricing, Intel, CPU, games
Reviewed on July 27, 2006The Velocity Micro Raptor DCX delivers the fastest performance we've ever seen, thanks to an aggressively overclocked Core 2 Extreme CPU. Because its price is $1,000 above that of the competition, however, we can't help but feel as though Velocity is buying a championship. That and recent case innovations from other vendors prevent us from giving it a higher rating.TAGS:Velocity Micro, Intel Core 2 Duo, Radeon, Dell XPS, NVidia, video card, vendor, chipset, high-performance, Intel, hard drive, games, video, PC
Reviewed on November 8, 2006We expect that we'll see better-looking and better-thought-out PCs with Nvidia's new GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card inside, but Polywell gets the distinction of having the first PC in our Labs with this next-gen part. And while its visuals and its power supply could use some attention, its price-performance ratio is hard to beat.TAGS:Nvidia GeForce, power supply, NVidia, quad-core, Dell XPS, card, video card, games, PC, hard drive, Intel