Warranty

You can check the warranty information for yourself on Vadim's website. For the first year you can expect the same treatment as you get with any of the available warranty offerings - all returns shipping, parts and labour are covered. After that the cost of additional warranty isn't cheap, but it's one that reflects the system as a whole and the price you pay in the first place. Considering the general inconvenience and cost to ship back a massive PC, an on-site warranty seems particularly useful (at least if you live in the UK).

If you're outside of warranty that doesn't mean all is lost because the contents might still be: the BFG graphics board has a ten-year warranty, and many other products have a two/three/five year warranty attached. So if something goes wrong with a specific component it can be replaced, but at a personal cost of time and effort.

If you're going for the watercooling kit and supreme cable management (like featured in this review), then a warranty is a no brainer because of the sheer skill and tightness everything is packed into the case with means getting stuff out then back in in the same way is exceptionally difficult. In addition, if you're already spending upwards of £4,000 on a PC, you're already considering a luxury item so protecting your investment should be an inevitable choice. For systems without such unique Vadim features, it comes down to your competence at replacing the components yourself, but if you already knew how to do that - what's to stop you from building it yourself?

Power Consumption

Without a second 8800 GTX the Vadim Fusion LQX Intel-775G2 uses less power than the Commodore as well, despite the heavily overclocked and overvolted CPU. At full pelt the 720W Infiniti is barely using 60 percent of the available capacity and should be running at a pretty optimal efficiency and PFC.

Value

This is the hardest part. Despite the vast majority of our readers being enthusiasts who are accustomed to building their own PCs, achieving the level of attention to detail and coordination of components shown here is something very few people manage to achieve. Those who do are known about because we feature their project logs on the front page every month.

Myself included, it usually it ends up with "yea it cools okay and nothing is in the way" so the internal case arrangement reaches a plateau of acceptable tidiness depending on how lazy or pedantic you inherently are. So is more than £4,000 a justifiable amount to spend on a PC? Absolutely yes, but only if you're the kind of person who sees a Porsche, Ferrari or any other high specced car with an immaculate attention to detail as an affordable option.

Final Thoughts

Not everyone has the time or expertise to invest in making a great PC and there are a few companies out there who serve this sector but I think Vadim gets it right in that the target is boutique rather than out and out gaming. Most gamers have little money after they've splashed it out on several consoles and games, and those with time to play on both a PC and console generally aren't making that much money anyway. For the few people who can afford this, they will probably be eyeing up a console and the casual gaming market because they already have a massive HDTV. This market is hard to sell to at best.

Again, we've got another fantastic PC here but is £1,000 for a custom paint job worth the investment? That's a 25-30 percent extra cost on top of an already expensive piece of kit. Well, that's ultimately going to depend on whether the issues with the poor masking on the top grill and the lack of paint on the inside of the 3.5" bay cover. It's expensive, but if you're motivated to buy a Vadim in the first place because you want a PC that nobody else has - it's just another layer on top of the already very specialised line of high-spec PCs.

There were only a few issues that we found with the machine. First is of course the aforementioned paintwork blemishes, which Vadim has assured us are because the paint job was completed in half the normal turnaround time. Secondly, the base plate on the BlastFlow Siberian waterblock gets pretty warm because it's not actively cooled like the DangerDen, but it's still far away from hot enough to cause instabilities. And finally, the fan and pump controller needs some work or replacement because the flashing is annoying.

Every Vadim machine is hand built and tested by a single person, it's not just run off a factory in China then shipped to your door in a brown box. The personal service is a key component and attraction that makes a Vadim system seem worth the price. If we disregard the £1,000 custom paint job that's not quite perfect, this Vadim machine is well worth buying. However, we have to evaluate what's in front of us despite Vadim assuring us that the paint blemishes were because of the quick turnaround.

Our advice would be to check over your PC very carefully if you go for the custom paint, and if there are any issues, report them to Vadim sooner rather than later. From what we know of the company, the guys at Vadim will want to make sure that you're 100 percent happy with your machine.

• Features
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• Build Quality
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• 9/10

• Performance
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• 9/10

• Value
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• 6/10

• Overall
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What do these scores mean?