Gaming Machine

If you consider playing Battlefield 1942 at 2:00 A.M. against a guy online named NukeULater one of life's little pleasures, you have successfully become one of the millions of people hooked by the PC gaming craze. Either you've embraced your newfound gaming lifestyle by modding out your system with fluorescent lights and see-through cases or you've taken a more subtle stance: Your box is simple black, but you still can quote the frame rate in Unreal Tournament, and you overclock in your spare time.

Either way, you undoubtedly want to experience more of the flash and sizzle in your games. "Speed, speed, and more speed" is your mantra, and you want those kick-ass graphics to be crisp. You also wouldn't mind being able to download MP3s, videos, and photos, and to watch DVDs as an ideal way to rest your aching fingers.

If all this talk is whetting your appetite for the ultimate gaming PC, read on.

Features:

A 21-inch or larger CRT or a 19-inch or larger UXGA (1,600-by-1,200) fast LCD (less than 20-ms pixel response time). In the past, only CRTs would suffice for the gamer. But today's fast LCDs are improving. And though CRTs are faster, LCDs are lighter and have more aesthetic appeal. With a monitor in the 15- to 17-inch range, hard-core gamers can cart both PC and monitor to LAN parties.

Windows XP Pro. The benefits of Win XP Pro over Win XP Home include password-protected local file-access control, as well as Remote Desktop, Encrypting File System, Roaming Profiles, SNMP, and Network Monitor.

Klipsch ProMedia GMX D-5.1 speakers. These give you surround sound for gaming and DVD movies. The set includes four stereo surround speakers, one center channel, and one subwoofer.

At least one 160GB, 7,200-rpm SATA hard drive. This is slightly faster than standard IDE, and the thinner cabling is better for airflow. Choose dual SATA RAID hard drives if you can afford them.

A wired keyboard. Make sure yours has customizable keys for first-person shooters or real-time strategy games. Also, there's a slight lag time with a wireless keyboard, which could mean life or death in your game.

A wired optical mouse. Wireless mice have slower response times. Optical means there's no mouse ball to get gummed up.

A Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card or integrated 5.1-channel audio on the nVidia nForce2 Gaming or Intel 875P chipset. The Audigy 2 has lots of input/output ports, which are useful for connecting external speakers, MP3 players, microphones, MiniDisc players, and so on.

For gaming die-hards: Choose from joysticks, force-feedback wheels, and many different game pads.

At least six USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire port, plus an NTSC output. You need these to hook up game controllers, printers, external hard drives, DV camcorders, and so on. (Four USB ports and one FireWire port should be on the front.)

The Intel 875P chipset or the nVidia nForce2 Gaming platform (for AMD processors). The newest Intel chipset has a fast 800-MHz FSB, dual-channel DDR400 RAM, integrated SATA RAID, and 8X AGP. Dual-channel DDR doubles the memory bandwidth, and SATA RAID effectively doubles the throughput to your hard drives. The nForce2 Gaming platform features dual DDR400 memory, 8X AGP, and onboard 5.1-channel surround sound.

An 802.11g PCI or USB wireless solution. This will benefit users who play online games but don't want to string Category 5 cable around the house.

Integrated 10/100 Ethernet for wired connectivity.

A chassis as cool as they come. You could always go for basic black with some fluorescent tubing and a see-through window. But if your wallet permits, get the customized auto paint job.

A Sony DRU-500AX DVD±RW drive and a CD-RW drive (for copying directly from disc to disc). Although not paramount to the gaming experience, this drive gives you flexibility in DVD-writable media, so you can create DVDs that are playable in consumer DVD players. This is currently the only drive that writes to both DVD and DVD-RW.

An AMD Athlon XP 3200 or 3-GHz Intel Pentium 4. If you're into modifying your PC by overclocking the chipset to eke out the best gaming performance, choose the AMD chip. If you don't want to tinker under the hood, then the 3-GHz P4 will work just fine.

1GB of DDR400 SDRAM. DDR400 is the fastest memory currently available, and for today's games and those that will come out in the next few years, 1GB should suffice.

An ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 128MB or more of graphics memory. Gamers want the fastest 3-D gaming card, and right now, this is it.