Aztec’s PC is a very different take on our $4000 PC A-List challenge. The first thing you notice is the monitor – a 19 inch CRT. This makes sense as gamers who want to play at 1600 x 1200 resolutions will feel limited by most LCD resolutions of 1280 x 1024. Making the move to a 20 inch LCD means a very large price jump and a very big drop in response time – a major consideration for gamers. Fortunately, the monitor that will be supplied with the retail system is black and not the beige as pictured.

The system case itself looks undeniably great. The Antec P180 case is very well engineered. The matte aluminium panels with black trim give it an instant air of refinement that most people will prefer to the G5 wannabe equivalent that comes with PC Express’ rival, Phoenix. The front door swings open (and is held shut by a magnet) to reveal the power button, two USB 2 ports, FireWire and headphone and mic jacks. There are also vents for the internal case fans.

Taking the side off reveals an interesting but well-thoughtout layout. The power supply is housed in a compartment at the bottom of the case and has a dedicated 120mm fan cooling it.

The top section looks cluttered but it’s well designed. A large plastic air duct channels air out of the case between the two Albatron 7800 GTX graphics cards running in SLI. These are already well separated by the larger-than-normal gap offered by the excellent ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard. Above them are two 120mm exhaust fans. With such an abundance of fans, the PC is definitely not silent. The case does well to mask much of the whooshing but with the CPU fan and chipset fan in addition to the three case fans, it’s much louder than PC Express’s Phoenix. That said, when you’ve got two 7800 GTX running together with an Athlon 3700+ processor, heat is an issue that needs dealing with – and it’s dealt with well here. Stability is not a problem.

Other internal components include two sticks of Geil UltraX performance memory and a 160GB Seagate hard disk. The latter (along with the CPU) is disappointing considering that both budget systems this month matched it. There’s only room for one more too. However, there’s space for three more 5.25 inch drives – only an ASUS DVD writer is supplied, though this does offer 16x DVD+R and 6x DVD+R9 dual layer writing. Another cheap optical drive for disc copying would have been preferable, though many will have old ones knocking around nowadays.

In our tests the system scored 4373 PC Marks – low compared with the Phoenix. We also felt the CPU and hard disk limited the graphics performance as the two 7800GTX cards in SLI mode scored similarly to the single 7800GTX in the Phoenix.

Using our standard 3D benchmarks we noted frame rates of 84.3 in Half-Life 2 and 56 in Far Cry – both with 4x AA and 8x AF. But this PC is all about running at 1600 x 1200 with all enhancements turned on and it’s better at doing that than the LCD-limited Phoenix.

However, even though the Samsung monitor was capable of 1600 x 1200 resolutions, we much preferred the Viewsonic. For a $4000 PC we did feel that the 19 inches (18 of which are viewable) was small. If you want grand resolutions you should have a very large grand monitor to play on them. Still, images still look great on a decent flat screen CRT like this one and it’s refreshing not to have to worry about viewing angles, response times and shadow detail.

But there’s little left to talk about. The bundled software consists of OEM products like Nero 6. No speakers are included. The keyboard and mouse are low-end Microsoft peripherals which are responsive (but the mouse wheel was poor). The standard warranty of one year RTB (parts only) also seems harsh. However, Aztec does offer an exceptional value three year onsite parts and labour upgrade for $240 – though for this money we’d like to have seen that included.

All in all it’s a good system, but there are too many things missing – like a big hard disk, speakers and a top monitor. That aside, this is an undeniably well built and well-designed gaming rig, that just missed out on a recommendation.