The Battle of the Gaming PC Titans

Totally Awesome Computers Ridiculously Insane

For a mere $5,000 TAC will set you up with everything you need to be on your merry gaming way. A huge LCD monitor, a serious set of 5.1 speakers, keyboard, mouse and a high-performance gaming system. We also really enjoyed the mountains of storage space they included, too! When you take all of this into account, you realize you may be getting a real value here. TAC prides itself on completing the entire PC package, including service. However, from our standpoint here on the eastern seaboard of the U.S., their service is nothing special. Sure they have a large number of shops in Utah, but if you're outside their area, you really cannot take it in for servicing.

Aside from this being one of the lowest priced systems we have reviewed (not taking into account accessories that you could choose not to buy), this system still performed worse than any other system we tested in this series. Why? We have a few answers: 1) Memory from a company nobody at THG had ever heard of; 2) Windows XP Media Center Edition; 3) RAID had no restore disk (we did a basic XP MCE install with what they gave us plus standard NVIDIA drivers).

This was the only system to supply a monitor as part of the package. The consumer can opt out on this and other features to bring the price down.

We found out from a reader that TAC's owner "SuperDell" is offering $1,000 to anyone who can build a system faster than his as per his radio show. If this is the case, then SuperDell will be writing a couple of checks to the other manufactures we tested.

Like the ABS system we tested, the TAC system came in RAID-0, but through some mishap in shipping, the RAID array fell out of configuration. Once again, we reiterate that a little dab of hot glue can easily stop this from occurring. The other option we have seen is to use SATA cables with secure connects.

Pros

• Low Price
• Storage Space
• Decent cabling
• Accessories
• Monitor

Cons

• RAID fell out of configuration without a restore disk
• Tech support
• Performance was the lowest in this class - in this round-up
• Memory Selection (Who are they)
• OS Selection for a gaming rig (Windows XP Media Center Edition)
• Reference Cards