The Falcon Northwest Mach V Exotix managed to attain clear performance supremacy on our benchmark tests. And, as with any custom-painted Exotix system, the Mach V takes top honors for looks, too. Forgoing the custom case will knock over $630 off the $3,816 sticker—good, considering that the price does not include a monitor or speakers.

Helping the new Intel chip along is 512MB of fast 1,066-MHz RDRAM, as well as two 80GB hard drives in a RAID Level 0, or striped, configuration. These components—plus the new ATI Radeon 9700 card—guaranteed success on our business and graphics tests. Performance-wise, we couldn't find a thing to dislike.

The terrific Creative Labs Audigy sound card couples with a DVD drive and software decoding to offer true six-channel support. At this price, some kind of DVD-writable drive would have been nice, in lieu of the included CD-RW.

The powerhouse ships light on software, with Windows XP Home and no productivity suites. But gamers won't mind much. This is really a power user's dream machine—even if adding a monitor and speakers puts it well into the price realm of fantasy for most. When spending this much, however, you'll have to add a little more to get three years of warranty coverage, as the Mach V has only one year standard.