Gaming computer cases

This should have been the worst UGM competition in history; incredibly, it was quite the opposite.

In years past, boatloads of PC manufacturers jumped at the opportunity to show off their PC-building prowess in the UGM competition. But this year, just half the usual number of contestants battled for the Ultimate Gaming Machine title. To add insult to injury, two of our past UGM favorites, high-end gaming-rig specialists Falcon Northwest and Alienware, withdrew from the UGM after Intel forbade them from overclocking the company’s CPUs.

But the introduction of Nvidia’s NForce4 chipset motherboards, the Nvidia-based technology SLI that links two graphics cards are linked together as one to net the fastest framerates possible, and a slew of the fastest machines on the planet turned this year’s UGM into a heated battle with, of all things, the winner finally determined by support alone. Brace yourself and raise your credit limit because this is gaming on steroids, with blistering fps scores, home-theater-quality audio, the coolest cases, and all the bells and whistles—and the price tags to match.

Copyright ?? 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Computer Gaming World.