Verdict: Appearances are only skin deep

If looks could kill, there would be two things that you would probably be glad of right now. Firstly, that after reading the price of the Voodoo PC Rage F2 you didn't then look in a mirror. Secondly, that the price wouldn't actually matter, because after buying a Rage F2 you could simply threaten to cart it into your local branch of Barclays unless they 'forget' the last few transactions on your account.

Okay, so the Rage F2's looks aren't lethal, but it is, however, by far and away the most pre-possessing PC in this Labs test. Appearances can easily mesmerise us and it's not always a look of pure beauty that does this either. The Rage F2 is not, even for a piece of electronics, a thing of pure beauty; it is, however, the most striking and stylish of all four of our Dream PCs.

The new Mesa chassis is very distinctive. Whereas Alienware and Demonite have gone for a smooth, sculpted look, the Rage F2 revels in its oblique angles. The front air intake could hardly be more different from the Alienware's smooth scoops; it's a pyramid-shaped close-up of Voodoo PC's tribal insignia. This cut-out provides excellent airflow into the interior of the case.

Aside from this triangular flare, the Rage F2's fascia is impregnable. A thick door hides all the details. The sense of strength is reinforced by the rest of the case's materials. The side window is made from glass, while the 'Eye Of The Storm' surround must have been cut into the heavy-duty metal using some very powerful tools indeed.

However, it's the paint job that really catches the eye. While it might look garish applied to the Logitech peripherals, on the case itself the thick, lacquered surface is little short of stunning. The dark metallic glint of the Voodoo Allure paint contrasts well with the red anodised case interior.

The interior of the Rage F2 seems to have received the same care as the exterior. The Intel 875P-based Asus P4C800 Deluxe motherboard is clearly visible through the window, despite the fact that the Rage F2 is water cooled. Whereas the SavRow is a bat's cave of cobwebbed piping, the Rage F2's thick tubes are neatly arranged, with the curves kept perfectly within thin spiral wrap. The pump is hidden too, as it's attached to the top of the case next to the PSU.

However, while the SavRow has to cope with liquid cooling eight TECs, Voodoo PC directly cools just the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU and Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card. The waterblocks are made by Swiftech but Voodoo PC has made a few alterations. The mounting mechanism on the CPU is different and the radiator is totally new. It's mounted at the front of the case, right behind the pyramid-shaped front air intake, and is cooled by twin 80mm fans. Although they're not our favoured large and quiet 120mms, Voodoo PC has cherry-picked decently quiet 80mm models, so the Rage F2 purrs very serenely while in operation. It's a little noisier than the whisper-quiet SavRow, but much quieter than the Alienware and the Demonite.

The Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU has been overclocked from 3.4GHz to 3.6GHz by upping the FSB to 212MHz (effectively 848MHz). It's good to see a performance boost such as this pre-supplied by manufacturers. However, Voodoo PC has frustratingly specified PC3200 RAM, which makes overclocking the FSB any higher than 212MHz very difficult. Given that the Rage F2's heavy-duty water-cooling kit could probably cope with a lot more speed, it's an annoying limitation that's going to stop you overclocking further.

We've seen three Voodoo PCs over the last 12 months, and none of them has been cheap. However, the Rage F2 takes Voodoo PC's premium pricing to another level. At £5,000, it's the most expensive PC in this test by a clear margin. While you might initially suspect the fans were fitted using ermine grommets, or the water-cooling system filled with caviar, a closer inspection of the system specifications shows where some of the money goes. The Rage F2 comes with 2GB of Corsair XMS 3200, and four brand new 74GB Western Digital Raptors in RAID 0. The single optical drive, a Plextor PX-712A DVD writer, is the only concession to restraint.

The excellent TFT monitor, the 20in NEC Mitsubishi Multisync LCD 2080UX+ is also used by the Demonite, while the Creative Audigy 2 and 7.1 THX-certified S750 speakers are a de rigeur, if mighty choice. The Rage F2 uses a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, which is also the graphics card choice of Demonite and SavRow.

The GPU itself has been overclocked from 425MHz to 448MHz.

PERFORMANCE

The number of components shared with significantly cheaper Dream PCs does beg the question, how much performance does £5,000 buy? Disappointingly, the Rage F2 was the slowest of the four PCs on test. Despite having the same optical drive as the other three PCs, the Rage F2 came third in the CD ripping test. When it came to the heavy-duty media workouts of video encoding and image editing, we hoped the Rage F2's four-disk RAID array, 2GB of RAM and hefty 2MB of Level 3 cache on the CPU would produce something special. Sadly, the results - second in video encoding and joint last in image editing - indicate that there's little benefit to be had from 2GB of RAM and so many disks in RAID 0. The Rage F2's interior might look good crammed with DIMMs and drives, but it simply doesn't offer any extra benefit over 1GB systems with two-disk RAID arrays.

At least the gaming benchmarks look good. It's impossible to deny the sparkle that the NEC TFT brings to Far Cry and Unreal II. The colours are precise and the update speed is flawless. As you'd expect from a PC based on the powerful GeForce 6800 Ultra and a high-speed CPU, you can max out every detail setting and enjoy plenty of anti-aliasing.

CONCLUSION

While the Rage F2's lowly standing in the performance league table of these Dream PCs looks a lot less pretty than its handsome case, bear in mind that these results are relative. The Rage F2 is still one of the fastest PCs in the world. What's more, it's not much slower than any other PC on test, except in Far Cry, where its Nvidia graphics card defers to Alienware's powerful ATi alternative.

The Rage F2 is also clearly the most stylish and visually distinctive PC. Some elements of the Rage F2 are clearly worth the high price - for example, the quality finish and craftsmanship of the case - whereas others, such as the 2GB of RAM and four-disk RAID are of little benefit. However, a Dream PC needs to be more than fast. It needs to be unique, and in this respect, the Rage F2 delivers. After all, performance goes out of date but style lasts much longer.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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