Scan 3XS H55 - Radius Edition GTX review

Scan systems don't turn up too often in the PC Pro Labs but, when they do, they're usually a treat. As soon as the 3XS H55 arrived, we unscrewed the side panel from the Silverstone PS05 chassis to find possibly the tidiest internals we've ever seen.

We're not talking binding cables together and hiding them behind motherboard trays, either: cables are strapped to the side of the case in neat vertical lines, with the main power lead running through the middle. SATA cables and other wires emerge only when they're needed to plug into relevant sockets. Those heading to the front panel are lashed at the base, and those for the graphics card and hard disks are tied to the metallic struts of the hard disk bays.

There's plenty of upgrade room, too, with a spare PCI Express x16 slot, three empty hard disk bays and a trio of empty 5.25in bays, all of which boast tool-less entry. Two DIMM slots lie empty, but the Akasa Venom CPU cooler sits in their way; if you want to add more memory, it will almost certainly have to be removed.

The slight slant on top of the Silverstone is reminiscent of the excellent Antec Nine Hundred Two - as is the solid build quality - and the matte black finish both inside and out makes for a smart-looking case. It offers plenty of USB 2 ports alongside eSATA, FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, optical S/PDIF and a single PS/2 socket.

Build quality and design are hard to fault, then, and it's also a surprisingly inaudible PC considering the components inside. Admittedly, the Akasa Venom CPU cooler emits a constant, gentle hum, but it's not the hairdryer decibel-level we often expect from high-end systems.

The specification is impressive, too. Taking centre stage is the GeForce GTX 460, but it's no reference card: Scan has chosen a Gainward card with its core overclocked from 675MHz to 800MHz. A score of 33fps in our 1,920 x 1,080 Very High-quality Crysis test indicates a competence at high settings. It's a similar level of speed to the Palicomp Core6 1055OC35, which boasted an ATI Radeon HD 5850.

Such closeness of results wasn't repeated in our application tests, however. The Scan's Core i5-750 processor has been overclocked from 2.66GHz to a punchier 3.6GHz, and it delivered a stunning benchmark result of 2.52 - far ahead of the 2.09 of the six-core Palicomp.

The rest of the hardware impresses, too. It's built around a Gigabyte H55M-UD2H motherboard and includes a spacious 1TB hard disk, 4GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM and a DVD writer.

Scan has managed to put this impressive specification together for just £717 exc VAT and the overclocked processor, powerful graphics card and decent chassis mean you're getting an awful lot for your money. The 3XS H55 does little wrong, and takes away a deserved Recommended award.

Author: Mike Jennings