Lab

Ultimate PCs

Technology moves frighteningly fast. Who would have imagined just a short 12 months ago that quad-core CPUs would now be available at mainstream prices (£140 for a Q6600, anyone?), and that our A-Listed 24in TFT would cost less than £300? With such dramatic advances, the idea of an Ultimate PC no longer requires you to put the kids up for sale on Ebay; in fact, the cheapest this month can be had for less than £1,700.

And what marvellous concoctions they are. We asked eight manufacturers to put together something that could proudly bear the title of "Ultimate PC", yet still grace the pages of PC Pro. You won't find any over-the-top neon lights and faintly ridiculous phase-change cooling here, but you'll be offered stunning performance at extremely palatable prices.

Quad-core processors are present across all eight machines, and all but one comes with a future-proof 4GB of RAM. They also all feature Nvidia graphics cards - things aren't looking too rosy for AMD/ATi at the top end right now. And you have the choice of single- or dual-card systems. If you're not sure which to choose, turn to p87 for a look at performance in the latest intensive games.

Display solutions range from a single 22in LCD, through dual-monitor setups, right up to glorious 24in monitors - some even with an HDMI input. High-end speaker sets also come with several of the PCs, and the mice and keyboards are far beyond the usual bog-standard kit.

We have Blu-ray and HD DVD drives for the ultimate in entertainment, RAID arrays and terabytes of storage, cutting-edge DDR3 memory and some gigantic and highly appropriate cases. Whatever your idea of an ultimate PC may be, you're sure to find something to match your budget and dreams over the next few pages, so read on.