14 DAY TRIAL // The past few weeks have been filled to the brim with announcements of newer, stronger, slimmer and /or more affordable PCs, whether netbooks, notebooks, ultrathins, desktops or nettops. In fact, virtually every possible segment of the PC market has been addressed. Nevertheless, in this world, consumers never get enough of new products, regardless of whether they buy them or not. As such, iBUYPOWER did not shy away from unleashing a pair of new gaming systems.
The PC maker didn't even stick to the norm. Since enthusiasts are known for wanting their PCs to look as good as they run, it would be natural for a high-end, colorful and LED-lit casing to be used. Granted, in the case of the Chimera DX12SD6, this trend is followed, as is evident from the Inferno gaming tower enclosure. The LAN Warrior 5830Q6, on the other hand, is crammed inside a micro-ATX case by the name of Vulcan.
The configuration of the Chimera system is centered around an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T six-core central processing unit. This chip is backed up by up to 8GB of RAM and paired with the DirectX 11-capable ATI Radeon HD 5870 video board. Furthermore, a 1TB HDD is available as an option, as is a 30GB SSD. The LAN Warrior is not as graphically-equipped, settling for the Radeon HD 5830 GPU, and also has less RAM, namely 4GB, However, it employs the same CPU and HDD of 1TB capacity.
As its name implies, the LAN Warrior is meant for enthusiasts that like to attend LAN Parties without having to carry a 20kg system every time. The Vulcan micro-ATX chassis itself is specially-designed for this, as is evident from the handle is has on top.
It should be noted that iBUYPOWER has already released its new offspring but has given Newegg exclusivity when it comes to actually selling them. The Chimera can be found here, priced at $1,499.99, whereas the LAN Warrior is accompanied by a starting price of $106.99.