October 2002 Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide

Introduction

A few months have gone by, some very hot hardware has been released, and it is now time for another edition of the Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide. In keeping tradition with previous Extreme guides, where money was almost no object, we're once again flush with $4000 of cold hard cash to piece together an Extreme Gaming PC worthy of respect in even the most Extreme gaming environments. As usual, expect to see the cream of the crop components, and what we feel are the best parts to satisfy the power hungry games being played right now, as well as providing a head start in preparing for upcoming games.

As with any buyer's guide, we still have to work with a set budget, and while a $4000 budget may appear to be seemingly limitless, high-end components start eating into this total right off the bat. The reality of even a $4K budget restricts us from piecing out an Extreme machine with frills such as a SCSI-RAID system, or the often dreamt of but hardly attainable, presentation-sized plasma display. This doesn't mean we're running down the bargain aisle either, but only that there are still some restrictions. In the good news department, prices have dropped on a few very important components, so let's see what we can modify and change. Once again, the question is: if you had $4000 burning a hole in your pocket, what kind of gaming system would this buy?

Extreme PC Budget: $4000

AMD and Intel Case: Kingwin Aluminum Case with Window Mods (KT436B-WM) w/ 430W Antec "True Power" Supply

Current Cost of Case: $180
Current Cost of PSU: $78
Months on List: New
Price Change: N/A

The Lian Li PC-68 has finally been dethroned by the impressive Kingwin KT-436B-WM case. The KT-436B-WM is a very attractive aluminum case with three blue tinted acrylic glass windows (both side panels, and the top) and it has a blue tinted acrylic front panel which makes for a very nice effect with the aluminum casing behind it.

This Kingwin case is more than just an attractive combination of aluminum and blue plastic, and inside is a slide out motherboard plate for easy access when installing new peripherals. Easy access for upgrades and the initial install is always a huge plus when considering the Extreme PC. Being constructed out of lightweight aluminum and acrylic allows the end user to have an attractive case, but also one light enough to take to LAN parties to show off to friends.

In terms of expansion, the KT-436B-WM has four 5.25" drive bays, three 3.5" drive bays, as well as six 3.5" drive bays that are mounted in a rack at the bottom of the case, in much the same format that Lian Li uses with their cases. The front panel has a host of features, including 4 USB ports, 1 firewire port, 1 microphone jack, and 1 earphone jack.

The case comes with five ball bearing fans, so cooling will not be a problem, however it ships without a power supply, and for that duty we've gone back to the Antec 430W Truepower ATX power supply. This particular unit will be more than enough to power the Extreme PC and then some. The power-supply also helps with system cooling with its dual fan design to help remove ambient air inside the case.