Product Reviews

Intel has been introducing new technology at a rate of knots recently, and this month we see yet another debut - a Core 2 Duo E6750 processor. It's effectively a replacement for the E6700, with the same 4MB of shared L2 cache and 2.66GHz speed, plus similar performance, but there are a few important differences.

The E6750 achieves its 2.66GHz clock speed in a slightly different way to the E6700: the 266MHz bus and 10x multiplier are replaced by 8 x 333MHz for a higher quad-pumped FSB of 1,333MHz. You won't see a major benefit in this system, but the higher FSB will allow Intel to push the frequency of its Core 2 Duo processors up to 3GHz, giving it even more of an edge over AMD at the top end of the market. Despite this, the TDP remains manageable at 65W.

This faster 1,333MHz FSB means you'll need a motherboard capable of such speeds, but Intel's new P35-based boards aren't the only option: Nvidia's nForce 650i SLI chipset has been capable of this for months - albeit without support for DDR3 memory - so Mesh has chosen the Asus P5N-E SLI as a starting point for the Elite Storm Pro.

It's a good board, too, with plenty of spare SATA ports and expansion slots, several of which Mesh has filled. Given the presence of Vista Home Premium and its Media Center component, Mesh has included a hybrid TV tuner in the bottom PCI slot, while, to take full advantage of the bundled 5.1 Creative Inspire T6100 speakers, you'll find an X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card in an adjacent slot.

This leaves one free PCI Express 1x slot and two full-sized slots for graphics: the main card is a 320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS, while the 550W PSU gives just about enough leeway

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should you wish to add a second in the future. We've seen the 320MB GTS before, so we know it's capable, so long as you keep intensive texture settings to a reasonable level. In our Call of Duty 2 test, it strolled through at the top settings with an average 44fps. By contrast, it stumbled through the DirectX 10 Call of Juarez benchmark at just 19fps on the lowest settings, although until we see a genuine DX10 game we'll take this with a fistful of salt.

Mesh has filled two of the four memory slots with 1GB sticks of 667MHz DDR2 to add a bit of backbone - a score of 1.29 in our 2D benchmarks confirms that - but it also has plenty more to offer. There's a 500GB Seagate SATA hard disk to take care of all your games, videos and music files, along with an 18x DVD writer for external backups. The card reader on the front supports all major formats except xD-Picture, with the two front-mounted USB ports present as usual. We'd have liked to see a headphone port on the front too, though.

At the rear, you'll find support for external drives by way of both eSATA and FireWire, along with parallel for older printers and scanners. The TV tuner also has a composite input for video capture, and one of the graphics card's two DVI ports is hooked up to the 22in Mirai monitor. The DML-522W100 is another common inclusion in PC bundles and it's large but not perfect. It doesn't support HDCP and you'll notice some bleed at the top and bottom edges in dark scenes. But, as an everyday monitor, it's fine and an impressive inclusion for the price.

In use, we did notice a fair amount of hum coming from the Elite Storm Pro, but it isn't too annoying. Replacing the stock Intel cooler could cut that back further, but you'll have a tough time calming down a hefty card like the 8800 GTS. That said, it's the price you pay for power, and there's no denying you're getting a lot of that for the £799 budget.

Compared with the previous A-List incumbent, the Evesham Solar Express Pro (web ID: 113142), the Mesh Elite Storm Pro offers a faster and more modern CPU, a larger hard disk, three extra inches of desktop real estate and 5.1 speakers. When you also consider the two-year on-site warranty, we have no hesitation in placing it on the A List this month.