The Striker II Extreme is packed with features such as a pre-plumbed water block for the chipset, audio riser board and great overclocking capability. We also dig the I/O shield which does away with those fingers that dig into the ports during installation.

Based on the ATI 790FX chipset, you can be assured that the K9A2 is compatible with all of AMD’s CPU offerings. The board itself is actually of the AM2+ variety which means that it uses a split power plane that will theoretically lead to potential power savings.

Favoring efficiency over raw performance, ATI’s newest GPU delivers big performance dividends in the sub-$250 category. Outrunning much more expensive high-end cards from the previous generation, this is a killer graphics card for anyone running a 22-inch or smaller panel.

Packing killer performance into a two-slot PCI-Express card, the GeForce GTX 280 finally delivers good DirectX 10 performance in a package gamers can actually buy. ATI may take the throne with its dual-R700 powered GPU, but until that’s available the 280 is the fastest single-GPU graphics card.

It's not the fastest drive ever, but we can't discount the HD103UJ’s combination of fast speeds and supreme storage capability. The Velociraptor may be slighty faster, but you’ll definitely want the extra space for your files.

It's speedy, it's small, and it's an elegant way to attach 320GB of storage to your desktop or laptop.  Western Digital's My Passport Elite is the latest and largest of the My Passport line, and we love how it puts a pretty (and speedy) hunk of storage into a pocked-sized form.

This SATA DVD burner holds two Lab records. Its 20x DVD+R write capabilities filled a single-layer DVD in 5 minutes flat. And rated at 16x for DVD+R DL, the SH-S203 crammed 7.96GB of data onto a double-layer disc in 13:10 —four minutes faster than its competitors.

We’re talking 6x BD-R burn speeds—the fastest out there. Which translates into writing 22.5GB of data onto a single-layer disc in little more than 20 minutes. And that’s when using 2x-rated media. We adore its $280 price —far lesser BD drives cost twice that.

In a market awash in larger, lower-quality 6-bit TN panels, we’d much rather spend the same dough on the crisp image and vibrant color of Samsung’s 20-inch 206BW LCD. In our tests, the 1680x1050 native-res screen demonstrated superior grayscale performance and agility with high-res digital pictures, games, and movies.

The XHD3000 is huge, comes with enough connectors to handle anything you can throw at it, and offers a beautiful picture for its expensive price. We’ve tested a number of 30-inch monitors, and Gateway’s giant display is a shining hunk of crystal compared to the other flawed display creations.