Mesh 7 review

The PC inside has clearly been assembled to match the monster chassis. Intel’s Core i7-920 processor has been bumped from its stock 2.66GHz speed to 3.6GHz, and a benchmark score of 2.56 indicates the level of power available. The only recent PC to beat that was the Chillblast Fusion Eyefinity, which scored 2.8.

It’s also aided by 6GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM and a 64GB Samsung SSD, which keeps Windows 7 Home Premium feeling sprightly. The extra 1TB hard disk and Blu-ray drive complete a tempting enthusiast specification.

Gamers will be pleased with the ATI Radeon HD 5970. Our original review revealed it to be the fastest card we’ve tested, and the dual GPUs proved themselves again here: the Mesh 7’s score of 56fps in our 1,920 x 1,200 Very High quality Crysis test shows a level of headroom that should cope with the top new games for some time to come.

Unfortunately, these powerful components fall prey to the system’s rudimentary cooling. We found that the processor peaked at a temperature of 91ûC in a stress-test, with the GPU running just 6ûC cooler. Both of these figures may be slightly lower than each chip’s maximum operating temperature, but it’s still hardly encouraging, and we wouldn’t want to add a second graphics card into this stifling environment.

Thankfully, the peripherals are better. The Iiyama Prolite E2407HDSD is a perfectly serviceable TFT with decent colour reproduction and sharpness, and the Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse are basic but extremely comfortable. It’s a little disappointing, though, that Mesh couldn’t find room in its extravagant budget to include even a basic set of speakers.

For all of the Mesh 7’s strengths, though, the inclusion of Thermaltake’s chassis – which costs £442 exc VAT on its own – pushes the price of the whole package to £2,339 exc VAT, which looks ludicrous when compared to rival machines.

The A-Listed Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire, for instance, comes with a traditional ATX tower chassis, but the Antec Nine Hundred Two remains a well-built piece of kit. It’s also a quick machine, with its benchmark scores impressive, even though it can’t quite match up to the speed of the Mesh. Crucially, it’s also over £1,000 cheaper, provided you don’t mind trading form for function.

So the Mesh 7 may be a fast PC, and it certainly looks stunning, but its sky-high price – along with occasionally suspect build quality and design issues – keeps it far from a PC Pro recommendation. Unless you’re the kind of person who buys a PC to make a style statement, you can find similarly specified machines for a whole lot less cash.