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A while back now I had the chance to use Monarch Computer's Hornet Pro. The Hornet is a small form factor game cube-style machine. You may recall that I reviewed Monarch's Nemesis system a while back. Read more to find out how well this machine stacked up and compare notes.

The Nemesis, while an amazingly powerful machine, is large both in physical size and in price. The Hornet Pro is a surprisingly affordable machine and combines with that the virtue of being portable -- or at least as much as a desktop can be portable.

Given my experience with the Nemesis last time, I was somewhat favorably disposed to the machine going in. The Nemesis had been put together with either top of the line components, or close to it. The Hornet Pro, while not in the same range of power as the Nemesis, was similar in construction quality. The paint job was the custom "evil lizard" look -- definitely not the design that I'd want for my own machine, but to each his own, I suppose. The machine itself is the standard "cube" size.

(I've had some bad experiences with reduced footprint machines before, so I was concerned about heat dissipation with the Hornet. My bad experiences were primarily on an Icecube machine in which the heat put out by the RAM, CPU, and SATA drive so close to each other was simply more then the components could handle, even with the case's sides removed.)

The Hornet Pro was put together very nicely. Cables were tied off well, with proper screws where they were supposed to be. The thumbscrews on the back made it very easy to gain access to the guts via one of the two side panels. However, after opening it upon receiving the unit and once more for this review, I had no need to open it up for circulation or anything like that.

The front of the machine is your standard cube face front. The only issue that I've had was needing to double-press the power button occasionally; the physical button on top of the peg got a little off kilter sometimes

I used the machine in a number of different environments. First usage was within standard office setting; I just had it up on the desk and was using it along with my 23" Apple Display. The second location was a basement LAN-party setting, with the third being home use. The handle on the front of box itself made transportation easy, and the machine was light enough that I could carry it, when I had to, with just my pinky finger through the handle. (Kinda hurts, though, with only one finger, so consider yourself forewarned.)

In each of those situations, the machine did great. In the home and LAN-party settings, the noise wasn't really very noticeable because of the other activities going on. However, in the office setting, the fan noise was loud enough that if the machine was running full-bore, you knew it was running full bore. But at least with nice big fans pushing air through the case, heat was never an issue.

The Hornet Pro has temp read-outs for CPU & Mobo on the front of the machine. The only time I was able to get the CPU monitor near 95 degree C was by using UT 2004 and maxing out all of the settings. At that point, the CPU hit 93.9 C, while the mobo chugged along at 83.4 C.

My other current favorite obsess^H^H^H^H^H game is World of Warcraft. WoW does not demand nearly the same amount of resources that something like say, UT, Doom 3 or the other major FPSes demand. But it does have the additional requirement step of needing to remain in sync with the server, while also rendering all the other things that other players are doing. Given that sometimes that connection to WoW is the major bottleneck, the machine once again handled it without any major problems. With every graphic option turned up to max, the lowest the frame rate ever hit was 39.9. Not quite as good as the Nemesis machine, but then again, you could buy roughly 3 Hornet machines what you'd spend on one of those.

For the price ($1695) the Hornet is definitely worthwhile, particularly if you are doing gaming or anything else on the higher computing end. I've spent the last five or six years building my own gaming machines, and have come to the end of my rope with doing things that way. The issues surrounding motherboard incompatibility with DDR400 Ram -- for instance, my (former) Icecube machine said it would support the RAM; turned out it was spotty in supplying power so the RAM would randomly crap out -- and just dealing with the hardware crap have seriously made me reconsider how much time is worth spending to save a little bit of cash.

The Hornet Pro features an excellent power system: the TopPower 350/12V. That's a 350W power supply, which is more then adequate. Internally, the machine has 3 drive bays. One is occupied by the DVD+RW drive (16x8x16x) while the other holds one of the best hard drives I've had in a while.

It takes a lot to get me excited about storage devices, but I have to say that the transfer speed on the Hornet's Western Digital was awesome. It's a 200 GB SATA drive with an 8MB cache. It runs at 7200 RPM, so conceivably you could get a faster spin speed, but the speed on the 7200 was marvelous for everything I was throwing at it; and moving up to 15000 would cause a noise/heat level increase that wouldn't be too good for a desktop machine.

I was able to copy VIDEO_TS folders in under 15 seconds with this. Kicks my PowerBook's butt on that front. *grin*

The third and final drive bay is left open; it has a faceplate, so if you want to throw in a floppy or memory card reader or whatnot, you have room for expansion.

The motherboard itself sits on a removable tray, which makes it easy if you want to change any settings or put more RAM in. The motherboard that I tested was a WinFast NF4K8MC-ERS nForce4 (u- ATX). It has the standard nForce 4, Socket 939, and supports up to 2 GB of unbuffered DDR400. I've been burnt on most of the mobos that I've worked with that supported only unbuffered RAM, but had zero issues with this one. (I suppose that's the benefit of a company making the machine and doing adequate testing, rather then just randomly ordering motherboards. *grin*) This mobo also has a PCI express 16x slot, one PCI Express 8x slot, and 2 "normal" PCI slots. For storage support it has 2 ATA 133 slots, and 4 SATA 150s with RAID support. Granted, I'm not sure how the heck you'd fit all of those drives into the case, but hey, good to know.

The integrated audio on board is decent; neither bad nor exceptional, and you get the obligatory integrated Ethernet, Firewire and USB outputs. One nice thing is that you get4 USB slots, plus speaker and mic jacks on the front of the machine, which makes for easy plug/unplug. The only connection issue I have is that one of the USB slots on the back of the machine sends power -- you can see the keyboard/mouse lights come on -- but doesn't work with an input device. However, given that I have six USB slot options, Im not going to sweat that too much.

In summary, quite a good machine -- and a decent price. I'm looking at adding another one for my gaming rig in the basement at home. The portability factor of being able to move it to LAN events or raiding MC with my guildies makes another Hornet Pro absolutely worth buying.

A while back now I had the chance to use Monarch Computer's Hornet Pro. The Hornet is a small form factor game cube-style machine. You may recall that I reviewed Monarch's Nemesis system a while back. Read more to find out how well this machine stacked up and compare notes.

The Nemesis, while an amazingly powerful machine, is large both in physical size and in price. The Hornet Pro is a surprisingly affordable machine and combines with that the virtue of being portable -- or at least as much as a desktop can be portable.

Given my experience with the Nemesis last time, I was somewhat favorably disposed to the machine going in. The Nemesis had been put together with either top of the line components, or close to it. The Hornet Pro, while not in the same range of power as the Nemesis, was similar in construction quality. The paint job was the custom "evil lizard" look -- definitely not the design that I'd want for my own machine, but to each his own, I suppose. The machine itself is the standard "cube" size.

(I've had some bad experiences with reduced footprint machines before, so I was concerned about heat dissipation with the Hornet. My bad experiences were primarily on an Icecube machine in which the heat put out by the RAM, CPU, and SATA drive so close to each other was simply more then the components could handle, even with the case's sides removed.)

The Hornet Pro was put together very nicely. Cables were tied off well, with proper screws where they were supposed to be. The thumbscrews on the back made it very easy to gain access to the guts via one of the two side panels. However, after opening it upon receiving the unit and once more for this review, I had no need to open it up for circulation or anything like that.

The front of the machine is your standard cube face front. The only issue that I've had was needing to double-press the power button occasionally; the physical button on top of the peg got a little off kilter sometimes

I used the machine in a number of different environments. First usage was within standard office setting; I just had it up on the desk and was using it along with my 23" Apple Display. The second location was a basement LAN-party setting, with the third being home use. The handle on the front of box itself made transportation easy, and the machine was light enough that I could carry it, when I had to, with just my pinky finger through the handle. (Kinda hurts, though, with only one finger, so consider yourself forewarned.)

In each of those situations, the machine did great. In the home and LAN-party settings, the noise wasn't really very noticeable because of the other activities going on. However, in the office setting, the fan noise was loud enough that if the machine was running full-bore, you knew it was running full bore. But at least with nice big fans pushing air through the case, heat was never an issue.

The Hornet Pro has temp read-outs for CPU & Mobo on the front of the machine. The only time I was able to get the CPU monitor near 95 degree C was by using UT 2004 and maxing out all of the settings. At that point, the CPU hit 93.9 C, while the mobo chugged along at 83.4 C.

My other current favorite obsess^H^H^H^H^H game is World of Warcraft. WoW does not demand nearly the same amount of resources that something like say, UT, Doom 3 or the other major FPSes demand. But it does have the additional requirement step of needing to remain in sync with the server, while also rendering all the other things that other players are doing. Given that sometimes that connection to WoW is the major bottleneck, the machine once again handled it without any major problems. With every graphic option turned up to max, the lowest the frame rate ever hit was 39.9. Not quite as good as the Nemesis machine, but then again, you could buy roughly 3 Hornet machines what you'd spend on one of those.

For the price ($1695) the Hornet is definitely worthwhile, particularly if you are doing gaming or anything else on the higher computing end. I've spent the last five or six years building my own gaming machines, and have come to the end of my rope with doing things that way. The issues surrounding motherboard incompatibility with DDR400 Ram -- for instance, my (former) Icecube machine said it would support the RAM; turned out it was spotty in supplying power so the RAM would randomly crap out -- and just dealing with the hardware crap have seriously made me reconsider how much time is worth spending to save a little bit of cash.

The Hornet Pro features an excellent power system: the TopPower 350/12V. That's a 350W power supply, which is more then adequate. Internally, the machine has 3 drive bays. One is occupied by the DVD+RW drive (16x8x16x) while the other holds one of the best hard drives I've had in a while.

It takes a lot to get me excited about storage devices, but I have to say that the transfer speed on the Hornet's Western Digital was awesome. It's a 200 GB SATA drive with an 8MB cache. It runs at 7200 RPM, so conceivably you could get a faster spin speed, but the speed on the 7200 was marvelous for everything I was throwing at it; and moving up to 15000 would cause a noise/heat level increase that wouldn't be too good for a desktop machine.

I was able to copy VIDEO_TS folders in under 15 seconds with this. Kicks my PowerBook's butt on that front. *grin*

The third and final drive bay is left open; it has a faceplate, so if you want to throw in a floppy or memory card reader or whatnot, you have room for expansion.

The motherboard itself sits on a removable tray, which makes it easy if you want to change any settings or put more RAM in. The motherboard that I tested was a WinFast NF4K8MC-ERS nForce4 (u- ATX). It has the standard nForce 4, Socket 939, and supports up to 2 GB of unbuffered DDR400. I've been burnt on most of the mobos that I've worked with that supported only unbuffered RAM, but had zero issues with this one. (I suppose that's the benefit of a company making the machine and doing adequate testing, rather then just randomly ordering motherboards. *grin*) This mobo also has a PCI express 16x slot, one PCI Express 8x slot, and 2 "normal" PCI slots. For storage support it has 2 ATA 133 slots, and 4 SATA 150s with RAID support. Granted, I'm not sure how the heck you'd fit all of those drives into the case, but hey, good to know.

The integrated audio on board is decent; neither bad nor exceptional, and you get the obligatory integrated Ethernet, Firewire and USB outputs. One nice thing is that you get4 USB slots, plus speaker and mic jacks on the front of the machine, which makes for easy plug/unplug. The only connection issue I have is that one of the USB slots on the back of the machine sends power -- you can see the keyboard/mouse lights come on -- but doesn't work with an input device. However, given that I have six USB slot options, Im not going to sweat that too much.

In summary, quite a good machine -- and a decent price. I'm looking at adding another one for my gaming rig in the basement at home. The portability factor of being able to move it to LAN events or raiding MC with my guildies makes another Hornet Pro absolutely worth buying.

A while back now I had the chance to use Monarch Computer's Hornet Pro. The Hornet is a small form factor game cube-style machine. You may recall that I reviewed Monarch's Nemesis system a while back. Read more to find out how well this machine stacked up and compare notes.

The Nemesis, while an amazingly powerful machine, is large both in physical size and in price. The Hornet Pro is a surprisingly affordable machine and combines with that the virtue of being portable -- or at least as much as a desktop can be portable.

Given my experience with the Nemesis last time, I was somewhat favorably disposed to the machine going in. The Nemesis had been put together with either top of the line components, or close to it. The Hornet Pro, while not in the same range of power as the Nemesis, was similar in construction quality. The paint job was the custom "evil lizard" look -- definitely not the design that I'd want for my own machine, but to each his own, I suppose. The machine itself is the standard "cube" size.

(I've had some bad experiences with reduced footprint machines before, so I was concerned about heat dissipation with the Hornet. My bad experiences were primarily on an Icecube machine in which the heat put out by the RAM, CPU, and SATA drive so close to each other was simply more then the components could handle, even with the case's sides removed.)

The Hornet Pro was put together very nicely. Cables were tied off well, with proper screws where they were supposed to be. The thumbscrews on the back made it very easy to gain access to the guts via one of the two side panels. However, after opening it upon receiving the unit and once more for this review, I had no need to open it up for circulation or anything like that.

The front of the machine is your standard cube face front. The only issue that I've had was needing to double-press the power button occasionally; the physical button on top of the peg got a little off kilter sometimes

I used the machine in a number of different environments. First usage was within standard office setting; I just had it up on the desk and was using it along with my 23" Apple Display. The second location was a basement LAN-party setting, with the third being home use. The handle on the front of box itself made transportation easy, and the machine was light enough that I could carry it, when I had to, with just my pinky finger through the handle. (Kinda hurts, though, with only one finger, so consider yourself forewarned.)

In each of those situations, the machine did great. In the home and LAN-party settings, the noise wasn't really very noticeable because of the other activities going on. However, in the office setting, the fan noise was loud enough that if the machine was running full-bore, you knew it was running full bore. But at least with nice big fans pushing air through the case, heat was never an issue.

The Hornet Pro has temp read-outs for CPU & Mobo on the front of the machine. The only time I was able to get the CPU monitor near 95 degree C was by using UT 2004 and maxing out all of the settings. At that point, the CPU hit 93.9 C, while the mobo chugged along at 83.4 C.

My other current favorite obsess^H^H^H^H^H game is World of Warcraft. WoW does not demand nearly the same amount of resources that something like say, UT, Doom 3 or the other major FPSes demand. But it does have the additional requirement step of needing to remain in sync with the server, while also rendering all the other things that other players are doing. Given that sometimes that connection to WoW is the major bottleneck, the machine once again handled it without any major problems. With every graphic option turned up to max, the lowest the frame rate ever hit was 39.9. Not quite as good as the Nemesis machine, but then again, you could buy roughly 3 Hornet machines what you'd spend on one of those.

For the price ($1695) the Hornet is definitely worthwhile, particularly if you are doing gaming or anything else on the higher computing end. I've spent the last five or six years building my own gaming machines, and have come to the end of my rope with doing things that way. The issues surrounding motherboard incompatibility with DDR400 Ram -- for instance, my (former) Icecube machine said it would support the RAM; turned out it was spotty in supplying power so the RAM would randomly crap out -- and just dealing with the hardware crap have seriously made me reconsider how much time is worth spending to save a little bit of cash.

The Hornet Pro features an excellent power system: the TopPower 350/12V. That's a 350W power supply, which is more then adequate. Internally, the machine has 3 drive bays. One is occupied by the DVD+RW drive (16x8x16x) while the other holds one of the best hard drives I've had in a while.

It takes a lot to get me excited about storage devices, but I have to say that the transfer speed on the Hornet's Western Digital was awesome. It's a 200 GB SATA drive with an 8MB cache. It runs at 7200 RPM, so conceivably you could get a faster spin speed, but the speed on the 7200 was marvelous for everything I was throwing at it; and moving up to 15000 would cause a noise/heat level increase that wouldn't be too good for a desktop machine.

I was able to copy VIDEO_TS folders in under 15 seconds with this. Kicks my PowerBook's butt on that front. *grin*

The third and final drive bay is left open; it has a faceplate, so if you want to throw in a floppy or memory card reader or whatnot, you have room for expansion.

The motherboard itself sits on a removable tray, which makes it easy if you want to change any settings or put more RAM in. The motherboard that I tested was a WinFast NF4K8MC-ERS nForce4 (u- ATX). It has the standard nForce 4, Socket 939, and supports up to 2 GB of unbuffered DDR400. I've been burnt on most of the mobos that I've worked with that supported only unbuffered RAM, but had zero issues with this one. (I suppose that's the benefit of a company making the machine and doing adequate testing, rather then just randomly ordering motherboards. *grin*) This mobo also has a PCI express 16x slot, one PCI Express 8x slot, and 2 "normal" PCI slots. For storage support it has 2 ATA 133 slots, and 4 SATA 150s with RAID support. Granted, I'm not sure how the heck you'd fit all of those drives into the case, but hey, good to know.

The integrated audio on board is decent; neither bad nor exceptional, and you get the obligatory integrated Ethernet, Firewire and USB outputs. One nice thing is that you get4 USB slots, plus speaker and mic jacks on the front of the machine, which makes for easy plug/unplug. The only connection issue I have is that one of the USB slots on the back of the machine sends power -- you can see the keyboard/mouse lights come on -- but doesn't work with an input device. However, given that I have six USB slot options, Im not going to sweat that too much.

In summary, quite a good machine -- and a decent price. I'm looking at adding another one for my gaming rig in the basement at home. The portability factor of being able to move it to LAN events or raiding MC with my guildies makes another Hornet Pro absolutely worth buying.

A while back now I had the chance to use Monarch Computer's Hornet Pro. The Hornet is a small form factor game cube-style machine. You may recall that I reviewed Monarch's Nemesis system a while back. Read more to find out how well this machine stacked up and compare notes.

The Nemesis, while an amazingly powerful machine, is large both in physical size and in price. The Hornet Pro is a surprisingly affordable machine and combines with that the virtue of being portable -- or at least as much as a desktop can be portable.

Given my experience with the Nemesis last time, I was somewhat favorably disposed to the machine going in. The Nemesis had been put together with either top of the line components, or close to it. The Hornet Pro, while not in the same range of power as the Nemesis, was similar in construction quality. The paint job was the custom "evil lizard" look -- definitely not the design that I'd want for my own machine, but to each his own, I suppose. The machine itself is the standard "cube" size.

(I've had some bad experiences with reduced footprint machines before, so I was concerned about heat dissipation with the Hornet. My bad experiences were primarily on an Icecube machine in which the heat put out by the RAM, CPU, and SATA drive so close to each other was simply more then the components could handle, even with the case's sides removed.)

The Hornet Pro was put together very nicely. Cables were tied off well, with proper screws where they were supposed to be. The thumbscrews on the back made it very easy to gain access to the guts via one of the two side panels. However, after opening it upon receiving the unit and once more for this review, I had no need to open it up for circulation or anything like that.

The front of the machine is your standard cube face front. The only issue that I've had was needing to double-press the power button occasionally; the physical button on top of the peg got a little off kilter sometimes

I used the machine in a number of different environments. First usage was within standard office setting; I just had it up on the desk and was using it along with my 23" Apple Display. The second location was a basement LAN-party setting, with the third being home use. The handle on the front of box itself made transportation easy, and the machine was light enough that I could carry it, when I had to, with just my pinky finger through the handle. (Kinda hurts, though, with only one finger, so consider yourself forewarned.)

In each of those situations, the machine did great. In the home and LAN-party settings, the noise wasn't really very noticeable because of the other activities going on. However, in the office setting, the fan noise was loud enough that if the machine was running full-bore, you knew it was running full bore. But at least with nice big fans pushing air through the case, heat was never an issue.

The Hornet Pro has temp read-outs for CPU & Mobo on the front of the machine. The only time I was able to get the CPU monitor near 95 degree C was by using UT 2004 and maxing out all of the settings. At that point, the CPU hit 93.9 C, while the mobo chugged along at 83.4 C.

My other current favorite obsess^H^H^H^H^H game is World of Warcraft. WoW does not demand nearly the same amount of resources that something like say, UT, Doom 3 or the other major FPSes demand. But it does have the additional requirement step of needing to remain in sync with the server, while also rendering all the other things that other players are doing. Given that sometimes that connection to WoW is the major bottleneck, the machine once again handled it without any major problems. With every graphic option turned up to max, the lowest the frame rate ever hit was 39.9. Not quite as good as the Nemesis machine, but then again, you could buy roughly 3 Hornet machines what you'd spend on one of those.

For the price ($1695) the Hornet is definitely worthwhile, particularly if you are doing gaming or anything else on the higher computing end. I've spent the last five or six years building my own gaming machines, and have come to the end of my rope with doing things that way. The issues surrounding motherboard incompatibility with DDR400 Ram -- for instance, my (former) Icecube machine said it would support the RAM; turned out it was spotty in supplying power so the RAM would randomly crap out -- and just dealing with the hardware crap have seriously made me reconsider how much time is worth spending to save a little bit of cash.

The Hornet Pro features an excellent power system: the TopPower 350/12V. That's a 350W power supply, which is more then adequate. Internally, the machine has 3 drive bays. One is occupied by the DVD+RW drive (16x8x16x) while the other holds one of the best hard drives I've had in a while.

It takes a lot to get me excited about storage devices, but I have to say that the transfer speed on the Hornet's Western Digital was awesome. It's a 200 GB SATA drive with an 8MB cache. It runs at 7200 RPM, so conceivably you could get a faster spin speed, but the speed on the 7200 was marvelous for everything I was throwing at it; and moving up to 15000 would cause a noise/heat level increase that wouldn't be too good for a desktop machine.

I was able to copy VIDEO_TS folders in under 15 seconds with this. Kicks my PowerBook's butt on that front. *grin*

The third and final drive bay is left open; it has a faceplate, so if you want to throw in a floppy or memory card reader or whatnot, you have room for expansion.

The motherboard itself sits on a removable tray, which makes it easy if you want to change any settings or put more RAM in. The motherboard that I tested was a WinFast NF4K8MC-ERS nForce4 (u- ATX). It has the standard nForce 4, Socket 939, and supports up to 2 GB of unbuffered DDR400. I've been burnt on most of the mobos that I've worked with that supported only unbuffered RAM, but had zero issues with this one. (I suppose that's the benefit of a company making the machine and doing adequate testing, rather then just randomly ordering motherboards. *grin*) This mobo also has a PCI express 16x slot, one PCI Express 8x slot, and 2 "normal" PCI slots. For storage support it has 2 ATA 133 slots, and 4 SATA 150s with RAID support. Granted, I'm not sure how the heck you'd fit all of those drives into the case, but hey, good to know.

The integrated audio on board is decent; neither bad nor exceptional, and you get the obligatory integrated Ethernet, Firewire and USB outputs. One nice thing is that you get4 USB slots, plus speaker and mic jacks on the front of the machine, which makes for easy plug/unplug. The only connection issue I have is that one of the USB slots on the back of the machine sends power -- you can see the keyboard/mouse lights come on -- but doesn't work with an input device. However, given that I have six USB slot options, Im not going to sweat that too much.

In summary, quite a good machine -- and a decent price. I'm looking at adding another one for my gaming rig in the basement at home. The portability factor of being able to move it to LAN events or raiding MC with my guildies makes another Hornet Pro absolutely worth buying.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
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Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
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Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
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Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
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All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
View

All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
View

All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
View

All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
View

All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine. One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
View

All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.