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Not only is the metallic orange paint finish perfect, but the cover over the front panel is damped like old-fashioned cassette-eject mechanisms. With the cover raised, there's yet more wild styling, with jaw-like mandibles which open to reveal each of the two optical drives.

Push the enormous power button at the top and blue light glows and reflects from several places. To remove the side panel, you have to undo the two thumbscrews where the arms of the front cover attach. Then, at the rear, it's a simple case of lifting two levers and sliding the panel off. A warranty sticker warns you to read the terms and conditions, but you can make certain upgrades without voiding the single year of collect-and-return cover.

One such upgrade could be to add a third GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card, although the two existing ones should deliver enough power for most people for a year or two. Acer has fitted a 750W power supply, which should be able to handle the extra power required. In our game tests, the Predator managed 78.2fps in Call of Duty 4 at 1,680x1,050.

Above the graphics cards is compact water-cooling system for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 processor. It's incredibly quiet,

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but it's a shame it doesn't also cool the north bridge. Instead, there's a small, whiny fan which doesn't really shift enough air to keep the chipset cool. There's no front-mounted fan or air intake either, making internal temperatures higher than we'd have liked.

Plastic ducting covers the processor and memory area of the motherboard, and is easily removed. This version of the Predator comes with 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, but there are two free slots for doubling this. Since Vista Home Premium 64-bit is installed, it can take advantage of the full complement of RAM.

An unusual feature for a gaming PC is hot-swappable hard disks. Four bays lie behind a door at the base of the front panel, two of which are filled with 640GB hard disks. Unlike the optical bays, and expansion slots at the rear, these aren't tool-less; each disk is secured to the caddie with four screws. Because of this, there's no room for a front intake fan, and the disks are cooled by a small internal 80mm fan.

There are no free optical drive bays, but there's a Blu-ray drive and a DVD writer already in place. At this price, it's a slight shame the former drive can't write to Blu-ray discs. It's also worth noting that the media card reader can't be replaced with another 3 in device in the front panel. It's good to see Logitech's G11 backlit keyboard and G5 gaming mouse bundled, though - both are excellent quality for gaming.

In spite of its failings - the inadequate cooling and inability to write Blu-ray discs - we can't help but like the Predator. At £1,569 inc VAT, it's expensive and the price doesn't include a monitor or speakers. Acer will be launching a gaming monitor that matches the Predator's paint job in the next few weeks; we'll bring you a full review as soon as we can.