So What's in a Monster?

    One of the keys to providing a superior computing experience is to use only the best of parts.  It's a lineup of the usual suspects...Abit, Pioneer, Plextor, Western Digital, Maxtor, Gigabyte, Creative, just to name a few.  But hey, we've heard this song before...does it really matter?  Do those expensive parts really make a difference?

Well, yes...

-The Motherboard.  There's a vast array of manufacturers, chipsets, and features to choose from, with equally vast pricing differences.  But hey, it's just a mainboard, right?  Looks like a good place to save 60 bucks...

   NO.  The motherboard is the backbone of your system, and is responsible for all your hardware communicating properly with each other.  Skimping here sacrifices speed, and more importantly, stability.  Blue screen, anyone?

-The Hard Drive.  Hmm, this hard drive is the same size as that one, but it costs half as much.  A hard drive's a hard drive...

    Definitely not.  A computer is a harmony of all it's components, and the hard drive is often the bottleneck in the information train.  The higher quality hard drives make your whole machine feel faster, and are quieter to boot.

-The Memory.  This memory stick cost 30% more than this other one...they're the same size, I'm just paying for a name...

    Ouch.  This is one of the main culprits in a quirky PC.  Generic memory is made generically, often introducing 'noise' to your data's signal.  Wonder where that error came from?

-Audio Drives.  Hey, any ol' CD/CD-RW/DVD drive will do....

    Yuck.  Cheapo CD and DVD drives often aren't close to their rated speeds, but even worse, they often introduce errors in a digital audio stream...creating those neat popping sounds in your audio files.  But as a bonus, they often sound like a buzzsaw, and vibrate their way to an early death.  As for cheap CD-RWs, saving that $50 tends to take years off your life...nothing 'inspires' like an error-filled backup or a stack of coasters...

-The Video Card.  Why the heck does this video card cost 4 times as much as that one?  They're both 128MB...

   Nothing makes as big a difference in games as your video card.  Cheap video cards often have poor software drivers, rendering more than a few games unplayable.  And that big expensive video card has the side effect of being 4 times as fast...pure gaming bliss.

   The list goes on.  Sure, good stuff costs more, but it pays off in the end by working better and lasting longer...not to mention saving your sanity.

But you can't just buy good parts and just throw 'em all together...oh no...

-No cheap tin boxes here.  Good cases features solid construction as well as a professional look.

-The heavy-duty exterior is built to last and keeps the noise down.

-A quality 300 or 400-watt power supply keeps your existing and future hardware running smooth.

-A single thumbscrew gives you access to a smooth, rounded-edge interior.

-Four 5-1/4" bays and three 3-1/2" bays gives you plenty of room to grow.

-An 80mm intake, two 80mm exhausts, a quality CPU cooler, and a massive 120mm fan mixin' it all up.

-What's this do?  Well today's fast hardware tends to get hot, and heat, my friends, is The Enemy.  Proper cooling practices lead to hardware stability and long life, and insure that when you push your system, it doesn't break a sweat.

-You really wanna cool off?  We can cut a 92mm blowhole that blows directly on your video card and processor for $39.

-It's a beautiful thing.  All those cables that typically create a rat's nest of a PC are meticulously bound and wrapped.

-So are we just clean-freaks?  Well, no, but our mama's WOULD be proud.  Good cabling makes it easy to get around your PC, and ensures the proper air-flow your shiny new hardware needs.  Besides, we wouldn't want all those nice fans in there not being able to do their jobs...

-Ahh...and here we have a nice side profile shot capturing the beast in it's full glory.  Ok, so now we're just showing off, but seriously, we put in the time and effort to create the PC's we'd wanna use ourselves.  So yeah, we're proud of our MonsterBoxes...and we think you will be too...

Click here to view all our case selections.

Nope, doesn't stop there either...now it's time for the grind, as we like to call it.

    Once construction is complete, we download the latest BIOS, and tweak it out for maximum performance.  After all, what good is a great motherboard if you don't know how to use it?  Then comes the operating system, and all the tweakage we can muster.  Drivers are updated, swapfiles, file systems, virtual memory, and resources are optimized, and all that nasty resource-hoggin' garbage is cleaned out...leaving you with a clean, fast, optimal slate on which to begin your new computing experience.

    Once that's set, we run a slew of benchmarks, just to make sure everything's performing as it should.  Each Monster goes through the Bapco SysMark, SiSoft Sandra, and WinBench suites, as well as the 3DMark, AquaMark, GL Xcess, Unreal Tournament 2003, Jedi Knight II, Quake III, HDTach, and CPU Stability tests.  Once all that's complete, any final tweaks are done, and the torture really begins.  Every machine must then go through PassMark Burn-In, overnight sessions of Prime95 and MemTest, twenty loops of 3DMark, six hours each of Unreal Tournament and Quake III, and finally a last overnight run of 4 simultaneous Quake II server sessions...*whew*.  If a machine can make it through this grind, we think it'll be ready for you.

   Hey, thanks for taking the time to check out a MonsterBox.  Hopefully you picked up a few tips to guide you through that jungle we call the computer market.  The point we're stressing is that, just because one machine's specs LOOK similar, all machines are NOT created equal.

Thanks...we'll leave the light on...

-The MonsterCrew

(comments?  comments@monsterboxpc.com)