Mesh Xtreme P9950 HD

Glance at the Xtreme P9950 HD and you'll be forgiven for experiencing a little déj vu. The CoolerMaster case is a popular choice among PC builders, and one we've seen many times before.

That's no bad thing, though. It's a solid, good-looking case and the brushed aluminium finish is pleasingly stylish, although the thin aluminium case panels do tend to transmit a little more noise than other PCs here.

Peer inside and there's plenty to like. All the cables are neatly routed and tied back, and the side-mounted hard drive bays make it easy to install new drives in the future: although the capacious 500GB Samsung SpinPoint T166 should keep most people going for a good while before the need to upgrade arises.

All the other systems here opt for Intel's dual- and quad-core processors, but the Xtreme P9950 HD plumps for AMD's top-of-the-range Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition. It's a quad-core part with four 2.6GHz cores, and Mesh has made the most of it by placing 8GB of memory and the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium at its disposal.

There are very few applications that will take advantage of the whopping 8GB of RAM, but you can be sure that it's enough to appease even Vista's memory-gobbling tendencies.

Gaming performance is pretty impressive too, but given the powerhouse that is ATI's Radeon HD 4870 thrumming away under the hood, that's no surprise. Crysis does show up the Phenom X4 processor's limitations, however. Despite the powerful HD 4870, the Mesh's score of 33 frames per second only just bests the HD 4850-equipped systems here.

Elsewhere, things are less rosy. The Hanns.G Hi221D monitor ticks all the boxes with its 22in panel and 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, but it can't hide its humble, budget origins. Images lacked contrast and skin tones looked yellow and pallid.

Mesh's Xtreme P9950 HD doesn't do a great deal wrong, but other PCs here offer better performance, better quality monitors and more generous warranties. This month we'd be tempted to look elsewhere.

Author: Sasha Muller