If you're a serious gamer, you need a serious machine — and a serious wallet. This $5011 Altech NRG PC is about as serious as they come. It's beautifully built, has a GeForce GTX 280 SLI graphics card configuration and plenty of straight-line speed thanks to its overclocked quad-core CPU.

This is a well-built and affordable gaming system with a difference: you get a Xeon CPU and the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. It's well-worth picking it up if you're after a very fast system for under $2000.

Big, bold and perhaps beautiful to some, the XPS 730 is a heavy-duty machine with plenty of heart. It could use faster graphics card options, but its twin-8800GTs should do a reasonable job of satisfying most gaming urges.

This machine is very well suited for gaming as well as other multimedia activities. It lacks a few key features, such as FireWire and a memory card reader, and its case isn't very solid, but it is relatively affordable.

For its price this machine isn't as strong a performer as we'd hoped, but it is still going to please gamers and editors of video or photos plus the Blu-ray drive is a big bonus.

For LAN gamers this is a great choice, but its limited upgrade options may put some people off.

A typical custom PC with plenty of power and a touch of room for upgrades, the Mega PC MPC Quad Fortress is an easy choice for those who don't want to build their own PC.

With quality components and quality peripherals you can't go wrong. The Excel SG-685X performed well in our tests and is bound to please any gamer looking for an upgrade.

While it's not the most sophisticated looking machine it does well in the gaming stakes, especially at this price.

As a total gaming package, this Plus Corporation machine is almost all you could ever want. It ships with a 22in BenQ monitor, Logitech speakers, a comfortable Logitech G5 Laser mouse and a Logitech G11 gaming keyboard, whose keys light up to make them easier to find them in the dark. In the end though, we have to question the hard drive configuration in this PC, which, to us, seems a little odd.

The Dell XPS 720 is a little hard to judge. One can't help but admire the effort Dell has put into its design and construction, yet by the same token, its a little awkward and the construction is excessive. It sure does look good though, so if you're after a machine that will be used for gaming, or even 3-D and video rendering applications, then it's worth considering.