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SmoothCreations LanShark Pro Customized Gaming System
Conclusion
One of the most interesting things about SmoothCreations is tied directly to that little wall preventing additional or longer video cards. With their upgrade service, you can order parts through SmoothCreations, ship your hardware to them, and they'll do the installation and customization to fit your case. Their warranty also covers overnight shipping inside the first 30 days in case you need it, and two-day shipping for the rest of the first year. They, of course, have phone support and a nice first-time's-free clean, polish, and service for your beautiful machine so long as you call it in that first year. And they'll sell you a three-year warranty, if one just isn't enough. And web tech support? Lifetime. But onto the subject of beautiful. I went ahead and priced out the individual parts, the includded software... here's where you should be drum-rolling... $1,600. Without shipping. I don't even know why you'd bother buying the parts yourself and putting them together. You'd be out a warranty and a paint job. Seriously, this custom-built, hand-crafted little wonder essentially costs less than the sum of its parts. Or in other words, holy freaking balls. (I had this whole rant about how this thing came with a massive price premium for the stylish gore and then Kurtis pointed out that I had the wrong price in front of me. Now I'm going to have to assume some of this hardware is stolen. I'm sure Intel can take the hit.) I'm a huge fan of Micro-ATX, this computer matches my expectations for the form-factor, and like I said, I literally picked out the same hardware for my computer before I'd even seen this one. SmoothCreations certainly delivers on the powerhouse machine side, and surpasses my expectations with looks and build. The year of phone tech support backed by paid-for mail-in support and lifetime Internet support alone is worth at least a Benjamin or two, so with the LanShark you're getting it essentially, for free. You can't get a better deal, and if somehow you do, you'll have to deal with the niggling idea that it's not going to use current hardware, it's going to have a high-power processor and video card shoehorned into a motherboard built three years ago, a power supply that's powder-coated on the outside and filled with spitwads inside, and the sneaking suspicion that the components were salvaged from an insurance write-off. I like this machine and what it has to offer. What I got was a completely unique gaming computer that even got the cable guy asking me about Smooth Creations. Oh, you got a what? An XPS? That's Dell, right? Heh, you gotta check this out... I got little questions, but nothing holds water once you check out the price tag. The hardware? Construction? Support? All smooth as butter. Or a gruesome totem fixed by glue from the boiled bones of my conquered adversaries. Vae Victis, XPS.  Special Offer: Exclusively for TheTechLounge readers, SmoothCreations is offering the next 15 customers to order any LanShark configuration a free copy of Microsoft Office 2007 or Far Cry 2. There are 5 copies of Office available and 10 copies of Far Cry 2 available, and they'll be given as requested on a first-come first-serve basis. Just make sure to mention that you've been referred by TheTechLounge to take advantage of this promotion. The Good  Three pre-fab configs, or you can order one to taste Shockingly good looks Construction to match Unbelievable cable management Warranty and service contracts a head above the rest Literally costs less than if you bought all the hardware and assembled it yourselfThe Bad  Mismatched fans? Is a 700W PSU really necessary? One blocked PCI-Express slot?
Page 1: Introduction, The Computer, Specifications & Test Setup
Page 2: General Benchmarks Page 3: Gaming Benchmarks Page 4: Overclocking, Power and Noise Page 5: Conclusion 
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