Every once in a while, we receive a PC for review thats an absolute pleasure to use, offering stunning quality and bucketloads of performance. XENONs Atomic 625 is all this and more.

Packing a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of PC2700 DDR, an 80GB Seagate Barracuda ATA IV HDD, SoundBlaster Audigy, RADEON 9700 PRO, a 19in Samsung monitor and both DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives, this is one of the best specified computers currently available. It combines all the latest and greatest performance technologies to make one hellava formidable PC.

As far as cases go, the custom XENON case is respectable its robust, functional and easy on the eye. It uses thumbscrews to secure the side-covers, so if you ever need to poke around inside its easy to access. The internal components have also been kept amazingly tidy and neat: all parts and peripherals are easily accessible and cables are tied up and kept out of the way. XENON doesnt skimp on the small touches either: the system has easily accessible USB and FireWire ports on the front right of the chassis, as well as mic and headphone jacks.

As we mentioned above, the graphics card is a RADEON 9700 PRO, currently the fastest consumer 3D accelerator available. It eats up just about anything you can throw at it. Modern games look simply gorgeous on this, as youre able to crank up all the details to full and play at very high screen resolutions.

The Atomic 625 uses an Intel motherboard, which is something of a mixed blessing. The BIOS options are minimal, so if youre the type of user that likes to tweak your CPU and RAM, youre out of luck. On the upside though, in our experience, Intel motherboards are more stable and less problematic when compared to many third-party options.

The bundled optical mouse and multimedia keyboard are also first-class peripherals. Theyre not the most feature-heavy ones offered by Microsoft, but theyre far superior to those usually bundled with new PCs.

We previously reviewed the monitor included with this system (Samsungs 19in SyncMaster 955DF) in our July 2002 Labs.While it failed to win an award, it is still a fine, sharp screen and scored around the middle of the pack in our rigerous DisplayMate tests.

Not surprisingly, this PC absolutely canes when it comes to performance. In benchmarks, it even managed to beat out our reference 2.8GHz machine (which has the fastest RAM on the market; PC1066 RDRAM) by a small margin in certain tests.

The only problems with the Atomic 625 are minor. For example, the motherboard only has two slots for RAM, limiting the upgrade potential somewhat. Its 5.1 surround Hercules speakers are also fairly low-end; theyre adequate to the task of gaming and most music, but if you pump up the volume and bass too high the satellites rapidly reach the point of distortion.

Save for one or two minor issues, the XENON is an all-round excellent system, so as far as PCs go, its about as close to flawless as you can get. If youre in the market for a quality system that doesnt make any compromises, this
is an excellent option.