In these recent economic times, when considering the purchase of a new desktop PC, the key elements should be not only what is inside the case, but are you getting the best value for your dollar?

When it comes to the iBUYPOWER brand, the Gamer Fire 585 not only packs a lot of power behind the side panels, but at under $1,500, you are getting a great deal of value for the price tag.

Ok, so first things first … what does the system have?

This is the default set-up, which is the system that iBUYPOWER sent along for this review:

• Case: Nzxt Guardian 921 tower – which has a good amount of room for expansion

• Power Supply: 800 Watt, which is Quad SLI ready

• Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Quad-core CPU with HyperTransport Technology

• Processor Cooling: AMD Liquid CPU Cooling Fan System

• Motherboard: AMD 790GX CrossFire Chipset with 7.1 sound, dual GB LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, Dual PCI-E

• Graphics cards: ATI Radeon HD 4870 x2

• Memory: 4 gigabytes DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory Module

• Hard drive: 740 gigabyte

• CD/DVD drives: 16x DVD-ROM and 6x Blu-Ray LG GGC-H2OL Blu-Ray Reader & DVD R/RW combo

• Sound card: 3D premium surround-sound onboard

• Mouse and keyboard: iBUYPOWER USB keyboard with 18 Internet Hot/Multimedia keys and iBUYPOWER 1600 dpi high-sensitivity mouse

• Operating System: Vista 64-bit

The CrossFire motherboard is the key to this system, allowing the dual video cards to interact for the best high-definition gaming experience possible. Now, simply allowing dual graphics processors to interact is fine, but unless you have solid graphics cards, that means little. But the Gamer Fire comes with ATI Radeon 4870 cards. These cards support DX 10, are HDMI capable, feature enhanced DVD upscaling (which means it can take lower resolution DVDs and improve them to near HD quality; not quite HD, but still much better than some of the older films can show in standard viewing), and has advanced anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to provide better texturing in higher-end games. In other words, the motherboard and video cards deliver a first rate gaming experience.

The desktop came without a monitor, so much of what you see will depend on the monitor you have hooked up to it. And, of course, it also depends on the games you are pumping through the system and what those graphics look like to begin with.

Several games were used to test the system, not only was there a beta of an upcoming MMO (the NDA prohibits saying which), but open beta for Chronicles of Spellborn, as well as other MMOs like Age of Conan, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings, City of Heroes, and other PC games like Wallace & Gromit’s Fright of the Bumblebees, Godfather II, and Call of Duty: World at War.

The graphics settings in EQ II took a bit of a framerate hit when running above the “very high quality” setting (not unusual), but generally the framerate for the online game was consistently in the upper 30 to mid-40s fps range. Playing the single-player campaign in Godfather II was flawless, as was the responsiveness, framerates and texture render in CoD.

Ok, though not a fan of the Vista OS, the Gamer Fire 585 does not come with a ton of peripheral garbage loaded onto the system, making the experience with Vista much smoother. Of course, having access to the DirectX 10 settings also a boon.

The size of the hard drive is also a big plus. With some games consuming up to 25 gigs for an install, having the 700-plus gigabyte drive creates lots of room for other programs and processes – like Photoshop CS5 or 3D rendering programs like DAZ.

The case itself is very sleek, with a temperature display in a LED screen on the front, as well as easy front access to disk drives and card reader. The machine has a stylized bit of artwork on one side panel (which is decent, but negligible in the long run), and clear plastic insets on the other side that allows a view of the inner workings. And the cooling fans are nice and quiet.

This is one heck of a machine, and a great value for the price. The machine was in constant use and performed each task given it superbly.

Pros:
Crossfire technology to drive a pair of very good video cards, huge hard drive, and 4 gigs of RAM all combine to create a very powerful system.

Cons:
About the only thing that can be said that’s even a bit disparaging concerns the OS but hey, it delivers DirectX 10 and that really sparkles up the graphics of some games.

Overall: 9.75
This is a great PC, and at a great price. This machine came into the house at a very opportune moment – the video card in the main gaming rig had gone belly up, and with several PC titles needing to be reviewed, the Gamer Fire got a workout and handled it all seemingly effortlessly.