Components
The crux of any system is the mix of components included, so let's break it down.
The processor, as we mentioned, is an Athlon 64 FX-60. It's ably cooled by an Akasa heatsink. It's not exactly the quietest we've heard, and our initial impressions are that it's no better than the stock AMD cooler, which is actually incredibly good. You can see that the overall layout of the case is pretty standard.
The hard drives are Maxtor 6L series drives. Rather than configure two drives in RAID, Mesh have specced up two separate drives, allowing you some capacity to back up your main rig, rather than stripe all your data across them. The 300GB drive is 7200RPM, and has a whopping 16MB cache, meaning that your data should pull off pretty speedily. The 200GB secondary drive is 7200RPM and has 8MB cache. Depending on how much storage you need, you might think about dropping some extra cash and replacing the 200GB drive with a Raptor - it seems to us that if you're having two drives not in RAID, you might as well have one super-fast for Windows and apps and one just for data.
Mesh have included two optical drives, for quick disc to disc copying. Two drives also means you can leave your favourite game in one drive, whilst still using the other for every day use - no need for naughty game fixes.
The graphics cards are standard GeForce 7800 GTs with an interesting cooler - it's a little different to the standard GeForce 7800 GT solution. The memory is Samsung branded stuff, but it's not enthusiast memory with heatspreaders - it would be nice to see some low latency enthusiast memory in the machine, seeing as the processor, motherboard and graphics are all amenable to a little bit of of overclocking.
The rear of the machine has the standard array of ports, with extra USB, an analogue modem, a volley of DVI ports and the outputs for the included X-Fi. The version of the X-Fi included is the standard edition, which lacks the onboard X-RAM, disappointingly. However, it will ably drive the 7.1 speakers included and also sports the awesome Creative headphone technology for a more 'intimate' surround sound gaming experience!
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