Alienware Aurora Star Wars Edition gaming PC

Impressive... most impressive

The x16 PCI Express slot is home to a BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card with 256MB of GDDR 3 memory. Although this is a decent card it has been well and truly trumped by the new GeForce 7800GTX and considering that it will only cost you £48 to upgrade, I'd go for the newer card.

The only other expansion card is a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS in the bottom-most PCI slot. Again, a keen gamer isn't going to want the performance hit associated with integrated sound solutions, and the Audigy card gives you full EAX support for all those in-game environmental effects. Another superb touch is the rigid plastic supports for the expansion cards. I've seen machines arrive with the graphics card rattling about inside. The result is a broken graphics card at best, and completely smashed internals at worst. Not only do these braces ensure that your machine arrives in one piece, but they also look pretty damn cool, giving the system internals a pseudo industrial look.

The 510W power supply ensures that this system is ready for some SLi action, should you want to purchase a second graphics card at a later date. The PSU offers no cooling, but there's a 12cm fan sucking hot air out of the rear of the case. Although the large case fan isn't too loud, the machine as a whole still makes a fair bit of noise, despite the noise deadening foam. Of course, you have to remember that there's another case fan, a fan on the CPU cooler, a fan on the graphics card and even a small fan on the motherboard chipset.

If you're thinking that the Star Wars theme only extends to the artwork on the system case then you'll be in for a treat when you power this system on for the first time. Alienware has also gone to the trouble of completely skinning Windows XP in a Star Wars theme. I'm particularly fond of the Death Star icon for Internet Explorer - kind of apt, wouldn't you say?