Blue power

We continue to champion the cause of resurgent desktop PCs, and speaking of championing, here’s the banner knight. The new Republic of Gamers CG8490 is billed a gaming station, with hardware compiled to meet the rigors of frenetic modern action. ROG also uses the tagline “built to dominate the battlefield” when discussing the 8490, and while that may be a tad on the aggressive side for Suds, we can understand the approach.

The default CG8490 spec reads as if the cold war arms race never ended. Intel Core i7-980X six core CPU, 12GB DDR3, and twinned Radeon 5870s with 2GB GDDR5. Desktop PCs can’t generally talk back, but we imagine this one would just grin at you upon being asked “but can you run Crysis?” Apply that to the upcoming Crysis 2, while you’re at it.

Hyperbole is a dangerous game to play, but sometimes you just can’t help it, because the CG8490 also ships with 2TB of hard drive real estate and Blu-ray. This is a true high performance desktop, and the gaming station moniker is quite warranted, since the way this one runs games you’d station yourself in front of it for hours and hours, too.

The case design on the CG8490 doesn’t subscribe to the subtle but aggressive look of recent ROG luminary the G73, so it’s a matter of personal taste whether you go for this more obviously gamer-centric chic. It does look menacing, plus the moving front panel adds to dust and particle protection. Cooling shouldn’t be an issue, in tests the case proved an efficient temp vacator, and the plentitude of fans therein adds to thermal proceedings.

In terms of general utility, the CG8490 is rampant overkill for those who only do modest productivity, online browsing and the like, or even garden variety multimedia. The strong hardware makes for great computing regardless, but it’d be a waste to run spreadsheets and word processing on an animal like this. For gamers, expect a performance horizon of at least two years with not a whiff of an upgrade, and that’s counting the gradual naturalization of DX11 effects such as advanced real time ray tracing, better motion blur and increased tessellation. Movie fans can make use of the Blu-ray, which may also come in handy as a storage medium for more PC game titles in the near future.

We like the CG8490 because it takes us back to the days when real gamers only got their kicks on monstrous desktops with the power prestige of a dual nuclear reactor, days before potent notebooks and other devices we won’t mention here. Well, perhaps those days are coming back. Either way, here’s your feel good mega desktop for the season.