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On the top of the case are two USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks, and an eSATA port; on the front, a multi-format flash card reader and an extra USB port. On the back are four more USB 2.0 ports on the back and two 3.0 ports — it’s safe to say you’re not going to need a hub. There’s also another eSATA port and onboard audio back there, but what’s startling is the number of video ports. Because this is an Ivy Bridge system, the Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 motherboard comes with integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics hardware, complete with VGA, DVI, and HDMI connectors. It’s kind of absurd next to a GeFroce GTX 680, though, and you’ll likely ignore it.

I had a minor issue getting up and running — I had to reseat the GTX 680 before it would recognize (not uncommon when a system arrives after shipping) — but other than that it’s been nothing but smooth, stable sailing despite the overclocked CPU. I can’t help but notice the slight fish-tank gurgle from the liquid-cooling system, but otherwise it’s a reasonably quiet system even under heavy load.

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 booted up in a little under 30 seconds — not bad at all. Upon checking the installed-program list, I found that iBuyPower had delivered the LAN Warrior II in nearly pristine condition, with only Microsoft’s Bing toolbar for Internet Explorer and Office 2010 starter edition pre-installed. Those are easy enough to clear out, though — after all, the only reason I even run IE is to download Chrome.

I was a little surprised to see the 60GB SSD and 1TB 7200rpm hard drive configured in RAID 0 (which means they appear as one drive). I’d prefer to keep my SSD as a separate Windows-dedicated drive with most applications and maybe one or two frequently played games, but this arrangement gives a performance boost over the standard 7200rpm drive and is easier to manage than two. But looking at the boot time and performance below, it’s obviously not slowing anything down much.

Max it Out

Because all anybody’s really interested in doing when they buy a new gaming PC is turning everything up to maximum, that’s what I did with the LAN Warrior II: all sliders pushed as far to the right as they’d go — no compromises. All of this, by the way, is happening on my single 1920×1080 monitor. Nothing fancy.

Batman: Arkham City

The settings recommend that you don’t push PhysX to maximum unless you’ve got a second Nvidia graphics card present to dedicate to physics acceleration duties, but sweet merciful crap, the LAN Warrior II very nearly pulls off flawless performance with a single GTX 680, averaging 44 frames per second in the benchmark test. In my own personal benchmark of playing a challenge room fight with about 20 thugs on screen at once it was almost completely smooth, but I did end up turning it down to normal PhysX to ensure I couldn’t blame my botched attack chains on dropped frames.

Total War: Shogun 2

There’s more power here than you need to run a Total War game maxed out. In the benchmark it averaged 66fps, and I never saw it dip below 50 even in the heaviest parts.

DiRT 3

3DMark 11

X3167 on Extreme settings.

But is it a good deal?

It’s a fantastic deal. For this money, you’d be hard-pressed to pick up — or even build — a faster system. Googling around for the same or similar hardware components, I came in at almost exactly $1,600 myself! The case may not be terribly flashy, but what’s inside will wow’em with its framerates. If you’re in the market for a new PC to play Diablo 3 in a couple of weeks, the LAN Warrior II is all you’ll need and more to never miss a frame of the action.

Score

Highs: Small and light; top-of-the-line hardware; great performance and price.
Lows: Tough to work in; not the sexist PC ever, slight gurgle noise from cooler.

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