LAN gaming used to be a niche market powered entirely by tasty snacks and caffeine fortified drinks, thankfully the innovations  have been shrunken down into even smaller and more portable dimensions without the annoying sugar crash.

CyberPower has updated its LAN Mini H2o V2 PC lineup with a slew of new CPU and storage options, think SSD, all anchored by the DFI LANParty MI P55-T36 miniITX motherboard. You can expect some high powered hardware in their small Silverstone SST-SG05 PC case thanks to the optional Asetek LCLC CPU water cooler.

Pricing starts at $999USD which should slide you into a comfortably fast and small gaming rig.

Intel’s Core i3 processor is something of a value chip lineup but just because it sports fewer cores doesn’t mean it’s a performance slouch.

CyberPower is harnessing the chip for its Gamer Xtreme lineup starting with their 1000 model coming in with a base price of $649 all the way up to their decked out 6000 series which sports an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card and a Blu-ray player starting at $1489.

The cheaper chip option may just make that gaming rig much more affordable and, with a bit of that overclocking spirit, a mighty quick machine.

Gaming rigs tend to target that absolute high end of the market where only the best components reside and custom paint jobs bump the system price up 25%, fortunately for you there are some sensible ways to go about things.

Digital Storm has cooked up an Intel Core i5 based gaming system that makes fine use of overclocking to bring astounding speeds all at a reasonable price. HotHardware has the review:

The relatively pedestrian quad-core has, in this case, been punched up to 3.8GHz from the factory. DS claims that the processors it ships in this configuration have been certified to operate “100% Stability and Reliability.” We’ll test that claim later in the review. It’s worth noting that the company doesn’t actually guarantee any single clockspeed if you opt to have the processor factory overclocked. For $45, the company will overclock the CPU to 3.3-3.9GHz, while $199 buys you entry in the 4GHz+ club.

A monster overclock all with a factory warranty, a bargain at any price!

Gaming requires a whole host of skill sets if you want to last even a few minutes against your opponent. You’ve got your hand-eye coordination, strategic mindset, and when you’ve exhausted all possible avenues to victory the good old kamikaze mission is in order. With so much to practice your skills on who has time to build their own PC?

PureOC has a look at the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC V2 gaming system that pairs together some modest gaming hardware which results in a rather speedy system to plow through games with:

A closer look reveals the motherboard is a LGA1156 Gigabyte P55-UD5, a very nice choice, with solid BIOS features and enough slots and overclocking/tweaking options to keep an enthusiast pleased. The Gigabyte board houses a Core i7 870, the flagship Socket 1156 CPU offered by Intel. This chip is not cheap, and it is fast. In fact, iBUYPOWER has overclocked the i7 870 here to an impressive 3.8GHz from a stock 2.93GHz. The CPU is cooled by an Asetek LCLC 240mm radiator (slim profile) liquid cooling setup, an excellent choice, offering a much quieter setup than a high performance air cooler. Seeing a liquid cooling setup in a custom-painted case, particularly when you bring it to a LAN party, is pretty special. You’ll be sure to get all the attention with this combination.

Perhaps a single, more powerful, graphics card in the build would’ve sufficed but it’s a slick gaming computer for a low price.

As far as boutique gaming systems are concerned there’s no one more famous than Alienware and their pursuit of the high end. Of course they’re only a choice if you don’t have the time and patience to build your own gaming system, but you’re an enthusiast and want things built your way right?

HotHardware has a review of the Alienware Aurora ALX and its Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire graphics crunching setup. It’s mighty fast:

As we saw in our preview article, the Aurora ALX is powered by Intel’s Core i7 975 processor running at 3.33GHz and features a custom X58 microATX motherboard. The 975 is Intel’s fastest and most powerful desktop CPU in its entire line up, though it is also the most expensive. For cooling duties, Alienware installed a 120mm singe radiator liquid cooling solution on top of the processor. And installed on the board is 6GB of Corsair Dominator memory running at DDR3-1600MHz at 8-8-8-24 timings. There is a ton of fast storage available as we find two 1TB 7200 RPM hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration at the bottom of the case. Last but not least, the highlight of the system are the dual ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards running in CrossFire.

It’s on the pricey side so you’re going to have to pay for that performance, on the other hand you won’t have to tweak it in order to get the speed.

While we’d all like to own the top of the line when it comes to hardware and the like sometimes you’ll settle for the lower cost option because you really don’t need all of that power or the budget is set lower than you’d want. That doesn’t mean you can’t get your game on.

Test Freaks has a look at the iBuyPower Corei5 gaming computer which puts together a competent set of hardware for your gaming needs all at an acceptable price:

Before we get into the comparison, I wanted to touch on the Express Gate Asus Splashtop. It’s a nice feature so you can get some stuff done, without actually having to boot into windows, the entire OS is right on the board itself. I’m not going to go into it all as it’s been covered many other places in depth but it’s a very useful, and quick to do quite a few things.

Heck their test system even includes a built-in OS should you want to do some basic web browsing without the tedious operating system load up.

What you see before you is Asetek’s custom made liquid cooling kit doing its job on Dell’s new Alienware Aurora PC. That should go a long way to cooling off their gaming rigs without all of that extra fan noise needed to keep those Intel Core i7 processors running cool.

Then again their northbridge seems to be sporting a 40mm fan which just about kills off any benefits.

The thought of a pre-built gaming rig is enough to scare most enthusiasts off, a machine from one of the largest PC manufacturers around would make them run at an even faster clip. This one is different though, they’ve got it all set up right.

Driver Heaven has a look at the Dell XPS 630i which sports a CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 4850 setup and some pristine cable routing work that would be painstaking to match in any other setup, all manageably crammed into a mid-tower case. Here’s a peek:

The processor cooler is one we have not seen before and it is tied into Dell OEM systems. We are glad they decided not to use a reference Intel heatsink and opted for something more substantial. The cooler has a small fan between the fin sections and is self enclosed so it adopts a push/pull air flow theory pushing cool air from the left from the intake fans, across the cooler and out the rear of the case. It still feels alien to me to have the CPU at the bottom of the motherboard however there is no technical reason why this cooling methodology should not work efficiently. As the Q9400 is a relatively cool running quad core (only needing voltage between 0.850 – 1.3625v) it should be more than adequate.

A bit expensive but it is a slick looking machine and faster setups in their lineup should fall into the price range of other boutique gaming system manufacturers.

Gaming systems are a funny thing. The speed of your components dictates where it sits on a rating scale, so while that top of the line CPU overclocked to an insane degree sure does handle tasks quickly that mid-range graphics card you paired it with is a bottleneck on its performance.

AnandTech has a look at the IBUYPOWER Gamer Paladin F860-a gaming system sporting a swift Intel Core i7 940 CPU and a mid-range Radeon HD 4870 1GB graphics card. Here’s their take:

The software side of the system is generally
clean, without a lot of bloatware. There are 43 processes running,
which is about average, and all of the support information is listed
prominently. Windows Update is turned on and set to automatic, which we
dislike seeing on a gaming machine. The video card drivers were
up-to-date at the time of shipping (8.11), and the system was tested at
that revision throughout except for Far Cry 2, which was tested with
the latest 9.4 drivers.

As far as pre-built systems are concerned it’s as good as any but you’ll want to opt for some more powerful graphics cards if you demand the fastest in performance.

The trend with most gaming PCs is to pile on the latest hardware into an outlandishly styled case, add your company’s gaming badge on it and you’re free to charge obsene amounts of money for it. HP’s Firebird 803 with VoodooDNA is set to change the gaming system formula a bit. engadget has details and pictures of the newest rig, meanwhile here’s its specsheet:

NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI chipset
Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor
4GB of RAM
Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards
Two 320GB SATA drives
Blu-ray
5-in-1 card reader
6 USB, 1 FireWire, 2 eSATA, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link
Bluetooth
802.11n WiFi

It’s not the high-end hardware you’ve come to expect but giving its smaller dimensions you can’t help but be impressed.