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 Every time I review a particularly expensive rig, I get email from readers complaining that "I can't afford a system that costs that much!" Well, sure you can - you just have to wait a little while. That $5,600 system I reviewed back when you were lining up for your boxed copy of the original Rainbow Six Vegas? Here's the equivalent, one year later, for a hair short of two grand. Now, you can afford to buy a fast system, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and some aftermarket cooling - which you'll need to keep this otherwise slick system from locking up while you're trashing the Bellagio.
Vigor Gaming pulled together a couple newcomers - Intel's Core 2 Quad 2.83GHz Q9550 processor (which Vigor Gaming overclocked to 3.2GHz) and the fresh nForce4 780i chipset from Nvidia - and bolted them to the powerhouse screen engine that is twin GeForce 8800 GTs (overclocked to 650MHz from the stock 600MHz) in SLI. I was grateful to see that Vigor didn't skimp on the power supply or the case: the 850W Cooler Master power supply leaves headroom for expansion, as does the Cooler Master CM 690 case (I particularly dig the simple tool-less drive suspension brackets and the plus-size power button in front). Another nice touch is the wiring, which is neat and utilitarian: rather than be super-anal about hiding the cables, Vigor Gaming paid out enough slack for cables to be easily unplugged and even rearranged if necessary.
The Hornet NE left the gate screaming, pulling down well over 16,000 3DMarks, 56 frames per second in Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces, and over 200 frames per second in Half-Life 2: Episode One, which is competitive at this resolution with rigs that cost three times as much, as well as being kind of scary. It struggled a little more with World in Confl ict, and then showed its limitations in Crysis, with a 15 frames-per-second average at 1600x1200 with settings on High.
 That's not such a big deal. By now everyone knows that Crysis is without mercy on hardware, and that if you want to play that game with settings near the ceiling or get decent framerates in any game at extremely high resolutions, then you'll have to shell out for one of those fi ve-grand dream machines. What is a big deal, however, is that the system locked up occasionally under stress, and the culprit, surprisingly, turned out not to be the wildly overclocked processor, but one or both of the mildly overclocked 8800s. Clocking them down to 600MHz or training a fan on the cards allowed the Hornet NE to complete my stress tests every time.
It's the kind of thing a single strategically placed fan might alleviate (or the swell Spot Cool fan-on-a-stick from Antec, www.antec.com). But this doesn't seem to be a problem for most folks who've ordered from Vigor Gaming - the vendor has an extraordinary 94% rating on Reseller Ratings. (You do check a vendor's reputation before you buy anything online, don't you?)
Vigor's taking a hit for the heatmanagement issues, but the Hornet NE nonetheless delivers major performance for an upper-midrange price and doesn't get cheap with the components or charge you ridiculous prices for impractical cablefu. It's the system you wanted when you couldn't afford it, and hey! Now you can.
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