Gaming PC

When 16-year-old William Schindler received an unexpected inheritance from a long-lost uncle, he knew exactly where the money was going. "I wanted the ultimate gaming computer, something so fast I wouldn't have to worry about speed for years," says the high-school student from Yorktown, Virginia. This February, he spent $8,700 on a Falcon Northwest gaming box, with a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1GB of memory, a 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 XT graphics card, and a pair of 250GB, 7,200-rpm hard drives.

Now, 500GB of hard drive space is a tad excessive; a 160GB hard drive is adequate. And the price raises eyebrows: You can get a killer gaming system for $2,400 to $5,000. Otherwise, serious gamers should follow William's lead. His mega-desktop also includes a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card, six-piece speaker set, and 21-inch monitor, providing room-rattling surround sound and jaw-dropping graphics. He even shelled out for an exotic case design. "Mine," he says, "has a picture of the grim reaper on it."

[A] Creative GigaWorks S750 7.1 speakers. The S750 speakers provide surround sound for gaming and DVDs. The set includes four speakers, one center channel, two additional rear channels, and one subwoofer. With 7.1 surround sound, gaming is truly immersive. And opponents will have a hard time sneaking up behind you with all those surround channels.

[B] The Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card. You can take advantage of the Audigy 2's abundance of input/output ports by connecting external speakers, an MP3 player, microphones, a MiniDisc player, or other audio devices. It also supports up to 7.1 surround sound (seven channels plus a subwoofer).

[C] A wired keyboard. Make sure your keyboard has customizable keys for playing first-person shooters or real-time strategy games. And slight lag time occurs with a wireless keyboard—which could mean the difference between life and death.

[D] For gaming fanatics, look to game pads, joysticks, and force-feedback wheels as alternative game tools.

[E] A 21-inch or larger CRT or a 19-inch or larger UXGA (1,600-by-1,200) fast LCD (less than 16-ms pixel response time). Although only CRTs will suffice for most gamers, today's fast LCDs are improving. And though CRTs are faster, LCDs are lighter. With a 15- or 17-inch LCD monitor, gamers can take both their tower and monitor to LAN parties.

[F] At least an ATI Radeon 9800XT or nVidia GeForce 5950 Ultra with 256MB or more of graphics memory. Gamers want the fastest 3-D gaming card, and these graphics cards fill the bill. But this may change before the ink is dry on these pages. Look for PCI Express graphics cards soon, which will supplant AGP 8X shortly. (By the time you read this, the GeForce 6800 Ultra series graphics cards will likely be available, as will the ATI Radeon X800 XT.)

[G] The Intel 875P chipset or the nVidia nForce3 250Gb platform (for AMD processors). The 875P has an 800-MHz FSB, dual-channel DDR400 RAM, integrated SATA RAID, and 8X AGP. Dual-channel DDR doubles the memory bandwidth, and SATA RAID doubles hard drive throughput. The nForce3 250Gb platform also features dual DDR400 memory, 8X AGP, and on-board 5.1-channel surround sound, as well as Gigabit Ethernet with security and integrated IDE/SATA RAID.

[H] An AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 or Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Gamers who overclock their chipsets to improve performance should choose the AMD chip. But for those who don't want to open their boxes, the 3.4-GHz P4 EE will work.

[I] A DVD±RW drive and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive (for copying from disc to disc). A DVD±RW drive lets you burn discs in both formats to play on your DVD player.

[J] At least six USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire ports, plus an NTSC output. An abundance of USB ports (and a couple of FireWire ports) are essential for hooking up game controllers, external hard drives, and the like. (Four USB ports and one FireWire port should be on the front.)

[K] 1GB of DDR400 SDRAM. The fastest memory available, DDR400 is ideal for current and future games.

[L] A wired or fast wireless optical mouse. An optical mouse has a faster response time and won't get slowed down by dirt and grit (as a mouse ball can).

[M] At least one 160GB, 7,200-rpm SATA hard drive. A SATA hard drive is slightly faster than standard IDE, and the thinner cabling increases airflow. If you have the budget, you should go with dual SATA hard drives in a RAID 0 array.

[N] A cool chassis. Nothing's stopping you from getting a customized paint job, if your wallet permits. But if money's tight, there's always basic black with a see-through panel and fluorescent tubing.

[O] An 802.11g PCI or USB wireless solution. Wireless connectivity is a plus for those who want to play online games throughout the house but don't want to string Category 5 cable.

[P] Integrated 10/100/1,000 Ethernet for wired connectivity.

Windows XP Pro. We recommend Win XP Pro over Win XP Home because of such features as password-protected local file-access control, Remote Desktop, Encrypting File System, Roaming Profiles, SNMP, and Network Monitor. XP Pro also has advanced network and network-sharing options, which are useful for LAN parties.