As many gamers can attest, prices can quickly spiral out of control when shopping for a computer that's capable of playing the latest 3D games. High-end components aren't cheap, nor are some of the chassis you can choose to house those components. Custom painting, neon lighting, and liquid cooling are just some of the features that can add to an already big bill. If you choose to build your gaming rig around a top-end processor, you're already spending more than you would on many complete systems. Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 costs roughly $950, which makes AMD's top-of-the-line Athlon 64 X2 appear as a relative bargain at $700. A high-end graphics card can cost upward of $500; double that in an SLI or CrossFire configuration, and you've spent $1,000 on the graphics alone.

Seeking out the high-end components and building a gaming system with such parts is easy if you have a limitless budget. The sons and daughters of CEOs, NBA stars, and Madonna need not continue with this article. For the rest of us, this page will show that there are perfectly capable gaming PCs that don't require you to make monthly payments. We gave ourselves a budget of $2,000 and set out to find a PC that provided the most power within our budget. Putting aside our dreams of dual graphics cards paired with an X6800 chip inside a custom-painted case, we went shopping with the hope of finding a system that used a midrange Core 2 Duo processor and a current but not budget-busting graphics card. We went in search of something along the lines of this:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, E6600, or E6700
• Motherboard with second PCI Express slot for future GPU addition
• Single ATI Radeon X1950 Pro or Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT graphics card
• 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory
• 250GB SATA hard drive
• DVD burner
  
  

Shopping at retail
If you are looking in stores--the national chains, anyway--for anything resembling a gaming PC, you're in the wrong place. On the belief that most gamers shop online or build their own PCs, Best Buy and Circuit City don't stock these high-end systems. Excluding the higher-end Macs and a couple of high-end Sony Media Centers, the priciest systems you'll find are well below the $2,000 mark. And even these systems--HP Media Centers for the most part--aren't meant for gaming, since they feature either an integrated graphics chip or, at best, a low-end graphic card. A gaming PC, more so than any other type of computer, needs an advanced graphics card with its own allotment of memory to draw all the polygons in every frame of today's intensive 3D games.

You have but one option if you want to buy a gaming PC at retail--and it's available only in Best Buy stores in select markets. If you live in New York City or another major metropolitan area, you may have noticed a new name at your local Best Buy: Velocity Micro. We've reviewed PCs from this Virginia-based PC vendor for years, and we've been very impressed on the whole by the systems it submits for review. Recently, Velocity Micro put a couple of its systems on Best Buy shelves. Shopping at a small market Best Buy in Concord, New Hampshire, we didn't see any Velocity Micro PCs in the store, and we were met with blank stares when we queried two sales reps about this relative retail newcomer. Best Buy's Web site lists five Velocity Micro desktops, including two right around our $2,000 spending limit, Unfortunately, both have been sold out for the past few weeks: the $2,099 ProMagix E2010 and the $1,999 Gamer's Edge DualX T1315.

So, where does that leave us? Both of Best Buy's $2,000 gaming PCs are out of stock (a third, the $3,499 ProMagix E2400, is in stock but out of our price range), and Circuit City does not cater to the gaming crowd. If you have an independent, mom-and-pop computer store in your area, it is sure to provide you with sound advice in putting together a solid gaming PC. Failing that, you're left with The Google on one of the Internets.

Shopping online
We started our online search not at Google but by visiting the sites of the usual suspects among gaming PC vendors: Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and Voodoo. These companies or brands--Dell now owns Alienware, and HP just acquired Voodoo--specialize in high-end, luxury gaming systems, and we quickly found that they become less appealing if you aren't looking to spend $3,000 or (easily) more. The same held true when we looked at small boutiques, such as Hypersonic and Overdrive. Another boutique, Maingear, surprised us with the aggressive pricing on its Prelude system. We were able configure a system with our target specs--Core 2 Duo E6600 on an Nforce 570 SLI motherboard, a 512MB GeForce 7950 GT card, 2GB of memory, and a 250GB hard drive--for a reasonable $1,747.

Velocity Micro's depleted stock at Best Buy doesn't mean you can't find a system direct from Velocity Micro's site. Most gamers have a pretty good idea of the parts that will give them bragging rights anyway, so it's nice to be able to custom configure a PC to your exact configurations or, in this case, to find the optimal parts to stretch your gaming dollar as far as it will go. We quickly spotted the Gamer's Edge 1500, which features Core 2 Duo processors on the same Asus P5NSLI motherboard as the Maingear Prelude. The baseline configuration costs $1,500, and when we made three upgrades--choosing the Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB of memory, and the GeForce 7900 GT--while removing any peripherals and the sound card to bring the system in line with the Maingear Prelude, we ended up with a price of $1,775. That's close, but the Prelude looks like the better deal, and it includes the 7950 GT card to the Velocity Micro's older 7900 GT card. Plus, we like the look of Maingear's chassis better.

Two companies that specialize in building powerful PCs while keeping prices in check are ABS and Polywell. The ABS Ultimate line of gaming desktops always provides a compelling price-performance ratio, but when we looked at the Core 2 Duo-based Ultimate X9 system, we couldn't configure a system that beat Maingear's Prelude. Polywell, however, presented a contender with its Poly i570SLI system. We configured an identical system to the Maingear Prelude, right down to the brand of memory (Corsair), but the 7950 GT card wasn't listed, so we opted for the next closest thing, its predecessor, the GeForce 7900 GT. We also chose a slightly larger power supply, 700 watts to the 550-watt unit offered on the Maingear. Like with Maingear, we opted out of all peripherals to remove those variables from the equation. We ended up with a system priced at an almost-too-good-to-be-true $1,590.

No PC search online would be complete without a stop at Dell.com, though we suspected that even big, bad Dell would have trouble matching the sweetheart of a deal we found with the Poly i570SLI system. Dell's gaming PCs can be found under its XPS banner. Starting at the top, we checked out the flagship XPS 700, but found that we couldn't come anywhere near the Polywell's price. We specced out a similar PC but couldn't break below the $2,000 mark. Though a bit more limited, the XP 700's configuration options were more in line with what we found on the Alienware, Falcon, and Voodoo sites: prices start high and go higher as you add in options. The systems begin to lose their allure as you try to hem them in to hit a lower price point.

Model	Maingear Prelude
Price	$1,747
CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Motherboard	Asus P5NSLI (Nforce 570 SLI chipset)
Memory	2GB Corsair DDR2 800MHz
Hard drive	250GB SATA 7200rpm
Graphics	256MB Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
Power supply	550 watts
Audio	Integrated 7.1 channel audio
Optical drive	16X double-layer DVD burner
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet
OS	Windows XP Home
Warranty	1 year

After the XPS 700 proved too tony for our purposes, we then turned to the more midrange XPS 410. Dell's site is overly confusing in presenting three different XPS 410 configurators that are nearly identical. Why not just one configurator with all the options laid out on the table? At any rate, many of the options on the XPS 410, such as a TV tuner and DataSafe hard drives, underscore the point that this is a system built for mainstream home use where it will handle a variety of media instead of primarily focusing on 3D games. You can find many of the same options as on the Maingear, Velocity, and Polywell systems, but what you don't get is a second x16 PCI Express slot.

Although you can configure it with a dual-chip GeForce 7950 GX2 for roughly the same money as the Maingear Prelude with a single 7950 GT, we like the idea of buying an affordable (yet still capable) card now with the ability to expand sometime down the road by simply popping in a second card. Most gamers will want at least that ability, if not two cards right off the bat. Thus, the XPS 410 comes close to drawing us in, but until Dell brings the XPS 410 an SLI- or CrossFire-capable board--and a few more graphics cards options while they're at it--it makes a better choice for mainstream home use than for serious gaming.

Our gaming PC pick
With no retail gaming PCs available, the best affordable gaming PC we found online becomes our overall winner by default: Maingear's Prelude. It costs $150 more than the Polywell Poly i570SLI, but in our experience, the Maingear Prelude is worth the extra money. We've seen a number of systems from Polywell and a handful from Maingear over the years, and though there is nothing inherently wrong with Polywell PCs, they aren't built with the same care you'd get from a small boutique, such as Maingear. Buy from a company that specializes in high-performance gaming PCs, and even when you choose a more basic model, you'll still get the same level of custom craftsmanship. Plus, Maingear's proprietary case for the Prelude is much better looking, to our eye, than anything Polywell offers. And like any good gaming boutique, Maingear is careful to neatly bind the cables and wires and route them out of the way. A tidy interior makes it easier to work inside the case and maximizes airflow. Plus, we give Maingear props for its great site, with a simple and clear configuration tool. Maingear also earns points for offering the new GeForce 7950 GT card.

If you have less than $2,000 to spend on a gaming PC, the Maingear Prelude is one of the best deals around. It's our current recommendation for gamers looking for a fast PC at a fair price that also offers room to grow on down the line.