This review appears in the September issue of PC Advisor, available now in all good newsagents.
With its Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme processor and 4GB of Corsair DDR2 RAM, this is an absolutely stunning system. Provided, that is, you want only a PC.
It doesn't come with a monitor – which isn't perhaps a bad thing, since it'll give you the choice of whether you want to stick with a modestly priced 19in screen or go the whole hog and step into the widescreen 20in arena. However, the lack of a keyboard, mouse and speaker system is less understandable. If you go for a flat-panel such as the ViewSonic VX2025wm and a cordless Microsoft keyboard/mouse and Creative T7900 speakers, you could well spend an extra £450, making a rather extortionate total outlay of £2,637.
But there's no denying the quality of this PC. Aside from the excellent processor and RAM, you get 650GB of storage space – ideal for digital video enthusiasts, who will consider this a groundbreaking system – and a pair of Radeon X1900 graphics cards, connected via CrossFire, that delivered 200fps in many of our games tests.
The sound is very good for an onboard controller, although we would prefer a Creative Audigy4 sound card. But in almost all other respects, this PC will absolutely blow you away. It even comes with a 64bit version of Windows XP Pro. We did find the case rather noisy and the swinging door was slightly irritating, but this seems a small price to pay for such fabulous performance.
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