TI’s PC is a monster on paper, but it also illustrates a new law of diminishing returns. In using a top-end E6850 processor, a top-end X38-based motherboard, two 10,000rpm Raptor hard disks (in RAID0) and an almost-top-end 7800 GTX graphics card the price has been pushed up over $3000 but the performance isn’t massively better than Pacstar’s $1999 PC (above).

The first difference comes when you turn it on: the 3GHz processor requires significantly more cooling and the stock CPU fan makes the whole system a touch noisy – even when idling. But there is a point to it all. The dual-core processor is fast and, when coupled with 2GB of RAM, the Raptor hard disks and Intel’s best motherboard chipset, it scored 1.42 in our benchmarks (13% faster than the quad-core Pacstar). So despite having two fewer cores, the faster clock speed makes it faster in different ways.

But TI is offering more. In addition to the Raptors are two 500GB hard disks which boost the formatted storage capacity of this system to a massive 1.068TB. Plus, there’s a Compro T750 tuner card for analogue and digital TV reception.

For 3D there’s an excellent 7800 GTX card. This averaged an impressive 61fps in our high settings Call of Duty 2 test. Stepping up to DirectX 10, in our hardest Call of Juarez test it average 13fps while in Crysis it averaged 51fps at 1280 x 1024 and Medium detail settings. Pushing detail settings up to Very High saw performance drop to an average of 17fps – you’ll need to buy a second graphics card to get the best out of this game.

But the X38 motherbaord does have room for another one (though it’s not SLI compatible) along with an extra PCI slot and two PCI-E 1x slots. There’s also room inside for two extra DIMMs and four drives (you’ll need 5.25in bracket adapters to add hard disks though). Front connectivity includes four USB 2 ports and two audio jacks. The back has eight USB 2 ports, FireWire and mini-FireWire, optical and coaxial S/PDIF out, two eSATA ports and six audio jacks.

The LCD is a 22in Chimei model. It offers reasonable all-round performance but looks cheap with its bulky black stand and bezel. Colours can be washed out and we found ourselves flicking between Text and Picture mode depending on what we were doing because it was uncomfortable otherwise. The keyboard and mouse are reasonable Logitech offerings.

TI now offers an impressive 2yrs parts and 5yrs labour warranty but even so, while it’s fast and more capacious than Pacstar’s mid-range PC, it’s noticeably noisier and can’t touch it for value.