Product Reviews

The Tempest Quad Pro doesn't look like the beast it truly is. The chassis could belong to a much cheaper PC, the keyboard and mouse are rather pedestrian, and those who like a satisfying out-of-the-box experience will be left wanting. Thankfully, your attention will be rightly distracted by the immense 24in monitor sitting alongside.

We've seen the Iiyama ProLite B2403WS (web ID: 125299) before. It has a huge 24in diagonal and a massive native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, which is enough to make the most of complex desktop applications - such as video-editing packages - besides being more than sufficient for 1080p HD video. Contrast is excellent, with an even black level and no backlight bleed. And, while it isn't the brightest, the 3ms response time keeps videos and games in sharp focus. Viewing angles are also superb, so there's no problem if two or more of you want to watch.

The monitor has only HDMI and D-SUB inputs, which jars slightly with the twin DVI-I ports on the Tempest's graphics card. Mesh provides an HDMI-to-DVI cable with the monitor, though, and both this and the graphics card support HDCP. The graphics card, an Nvidia 8800 GTS, provides hardware acceleration for video, so you can be sure of stutter-free playback from HD video if you add a Blu-ray or HD DVD optical drive in the future. The card also provides enough power to deal with any modern game and is DirectX 10-compatible for the next generation of titles. It can't compete with the Zoostorm, but nonetheless it produced a smooth 36fps in our Call of Duty test at its highest settings, and managed 25fps in Call of Juarez at its lowest settings.

Pop the side off the Tempest and you'll find a neat, carefully built system. The Asus P5N-E SLI

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motherboard isn't a recent model, but it doesn't lack anything, and supports SLI. There aren't two free backplates available in the chassis, though, so adding another 8800 card is impossible unless you ditch one of the two PCI cards. The first is a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card - nice to have for committed audiophiles and die-hard gamers, but overkill for most users. The bundled speakers from Creative underline this - they're reasonable, but won't make the most of the hardware. The second card is a TV tuner. It's a Philips hybrid model, but has only a single tuner, so you can't watch one channel while recording another.

There's plenty of storage for TV programmes courtesy of the roomy 500GB hard disk, and the optical drive is capable of writing to all kinds of blank optical disc except Blu-ray and HD DVD. Both drives use SATA interfaces, leaving two ports spare inside the case, plus an eSATA port on the rear. Seven USB ports are provided - four on the back and three on the front, with a pair of FireWire ports included as well. The front-mounted memory card reader supports all the common formats.

Editing photos or videos won't be a problem with the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor and a whopping 4GB of RAM. In practice, not all of it will be accessible unless you install a 64-bit OS, but even without the full complement visible to Windows the Tempest roared through our benchmarks to a final score of 1.50. The only problem is that its core specification is already available in the Mesh Elite Quad FX (web ID: 122231), which is more than £300 cheaper. But you miss out in some important ways with the cheaper system: the Tempest's monitor isn't only bigger, it's better and has a higher resolution. You also get a faster graphics card, so the Tempest is far more compelling for gamers.

The Tempest wins a deserving place on the A List. If all you want is quad-core power and a huge complement of RAM, there are other cheaper systems around. But the Tempest is an excellent all-rounder. The TV tuner gives some much-needed media capabilities, and the fast graphics card adds even more to the system's desirability. Ignore the dull looks - the Tempest will handle anything you throw at it and then some, and is an obvious choice for those looking for the best deal for less than a grand.