Labs

Like the Chillblast, this PC from Gladiator aims to squeeze as much as possible from limited resources by overclocking. The difference is that the Retiarius PCP Q6600- although just outside the budget - starts from a far higher quad-core platform. The Core 2 Quad Q6600 is a powerful CPU to include at this price, but with its core frequency of 2.4GHz raised to 3GHz, and a large OCZ Vanquisher heatsink to ensure it stays cool and stable, it leaps way ahead of anything else this month in our 2D benchmarks.A score of 1.69 is more typical for an ultimate PC, so to get this power here is nothing short of phenomenal.

The Radeon 3850 is a little more restrained,

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but it's certainly a capable gaming card. It managed Crysis at 1,280 x 1,024 with Medium settings, so it will happily trundle through older games.

Given the proportion of the budget spent on the core components, Gladiator opts for surprisingly high-quality peripherals. The monitor is a 20in Asus model, which is a nice choice for entertainment. It may not have theinches of the LG or Iiyama screens but it shares the same 1,680 x 1,050 resolution and has some passable 1W speakers integrated.

The Antec case is very well designed with easy access to the drive bays, where you'll find a capacious 500GB hard disk and a DVD writer. Media card slots sit on the front panel, and there's an eSATA port on the back - useful for connecting a high-performance external drive.

The silver and black keyboard and mouse are among the most stylish of the group, and both are pleasant to use. Gladiator also offers a one-year collect-and-return warranty should anything go awry, but there's little else to speak of by way of extra value for your money. It's very much focused on the powerful internals. The draw of a cheap quad-core system may be enough to tempt some, but it isn't quite enough of a "luxury" pc to rival the award winners this month.