Five Games That'll Break Your PC

Preymore
What It Will Break: Your anemic sound card

This shooter has promised to brutalize our brain buckets for nearly a decade now, and it's finally due out this summer. Our trip through the twisted alien ship during a recent hands-on session made us feel like we were fighting inside of an M.C. Escher painting. Gravity changed its mind at every turn and our eyes whispered dirty, dirty lies to our brains over and over.

Prey is so visually confusing that your ears are gonna outsmart your eyeballs every time, and upgrading to a 5.1 surround system is a must, especially if you plan to live very long in a deathmatch. If you don't already have a multi-channel soundcard, even the bleeding edge is within reach. Check out the X-Fi lineup from Creative Labs, new cards that give you surround sound even from regular headphones - perfect for waxing that guy who keeps sneaking up behind you.

But it's still too bad we can't upgrade our brains (yet).

We Recommend: Go with a top-flight soundcard like Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeMusic for about $130.