The Velocity Micro Edge Z40 ($1,199 direct) is the latest bang for the buck champion in the budget gaming PC arena—knocking out the reigning Editors' Choice holder, the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon ($1,099 direct, 4.5 stars). The Edge Z40 has the power to decimate the competition at this price point, and includes a feature set that used to take thousands of dollars to achieve. This desktop is expandable, rocks hard on the game grid, and already has most of the features that an enthusiast user looks for. The Edge Z40 is the one to buy if you're looking for a high-performance desktop at a reasonable price.

Design and Features
The Edge Z40 uses Velocity Micro's Classic aluminum case, which we've seen before on desktops like the Velocity Micro Vector Holiday Edition ($999 direct, 4.5 stars), which also put a lot of high-end components in an economical package. Just about everything good and bad about the case still applies: It has a clear window, so you can see all the internal components, plus good cooling due to front vents and a few lighted fans.

The Edge Z40 has plenty of internal storage, with space for an additional optical drive, four extra hard drives, two memory DIMMs, and five SATA connectors for the drives (one of the five is 6Gbps, the other four are 3Gbps). You'll need to screw in guide pins for the hard drives, but once on, they are easy to slide into the hard drive racks. The structural panels surrounding the power supply unit hide the label, so you'll have to pop it out to check its capacity if you forget (this one is a 550W PSU), but it's pretty easy to get to the internal power cables. The system also has two free PCI slots, a PCIe x1 slot, and a PCIe x16 slot. The motherboard is marked "CrossFireX ready" (for supporting two ATI/AMD graphics cards concurrently), but you won't be able to add an additional Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 card to the Z40 (the motherboard isn't SLI compatible). The motherboard's second PCIe x16 graphics card slot only supports up to x4 bandwidth anyway, so you can't get SLI to run at full speed even if you had two GTX 560 cards. The same bandwidth limitations would also affect use of two AMD Radeon HD cards. You'd get some added performance and functionality when using two graphics cards, just not as much as if the system had a fully x16/x16 graphics slot setup. Good thing that the desktop has decent 3D graphics prowess as is with one graphics card (more on that below).

Outside, there are more than the usual number of access ports: eight USB 2.0 ports, one combo USB/eSATA port, two USB 3.0 ports, two FireWire ports, SPDIF, PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, audio out, two DVI ports on the graphics card, and a mini-HDMI port (also on the graphics card). Essentially, if you can connect it to a Windows PC, you can connect it to this PC. The desktop has a tray-loading Blu-ray player/DVD burner combo drive and a card reader to round out the multimedia offerings. One thing that's not on the menu is bloatware: Velocity Micro shipped us the Z40 without any bloatware installed, which is great for the gamer as well as the multimedia enthusiast.

Performance
Speaking of multimedia, the Edge Z40 is blazing fast at the benchmark tests. It dispatches the Handbrake video test in 1 minute 21 seconds, which is quicker than the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon (2:09) and the V3 Gaming PC Move 3DS ($1,199 direct, 4 stars) (1:31). It's the same story with our Photoshop CS5 test, the Edge Z40 (2:45) outpaces the Gamer Dragon (4:28) and the Move 3DS (3:07). The Edge Z40 has the same Intel Core i5-2500k processor as the Move 3DS, but Velocity Micro overclocks theirs from 3.3GHz to 4GHz, which V3 Gaming managed 3.7GHz. Both desktops are quicker than the Cyberpower Dragon, which uses the six-core AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (overclocked from 2.8GHz to 3.36GHz).

The wins extend to the gaming grid as well. The Edge Z40 returns smoothly playable scores for both Crysis (105 frames per second) and Lost Planet 2 (130 fps) at the Medium/Middle quality levels. When bumped up to Very High/High quality, the system shows its mettle by returning almost playable scores for Crysis (30 fps) and playable scores for Lost Planet 2 (49 fps). The V3 Move 3DS isn't too far behind on all four tests, but the Edge Z40 is still the winner by good margin over the V3 Move 3DS and Cyberpower Dragon. The Edge Z40's Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card plus the overclocked Intel Core i5-2500k processor equals high-end performance on and off the game grid.

Compared with other entry-level gaming desktops like the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon, the Velocity Micro Edge Z40 shows the inexorable march of technology. For only $100 more, the Velocity Micro Edge Z40 spanks the Gamer Dragon at all of the tests, most by a significant margin. The V3 Gaming Move 3DS is identical in price (both are $1,199) and is a lot closer on the benchmark tests, but the Edge Z40 is more expandable, and is ultimately the winner on the feature front. The Edge Z40 has niceties that the more compact Move 3DS lacks, like Wi-Fi, an included keyboard and mouse, and Blu-ray. In terms of bang for the buck (or is that Price/Performance ratio?), it's hard to compete with the Velocity Micro Edge Z40. All this makes it the new Editors' Choice for entry-level gaming desktops, replacing the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for the Velocity Micro Edge Z40

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Velocity Micro Edge Z40 with several other desktops side by side.

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