The first thing that catches your eye upon unpacking this PC is the black anodised case with custom stealth drive face plates. Its front USB and audio connectivity keep you from fumbling around for common rear-mounted ports, and the inclusion of thumb-screws makes for easy access to the chassis.

It's inside that you find a HyperThreaded Pentium 4 3GHz processor with an 800MHz FSB, plus a gig of DDR400 RAM in dual-channel configuration. All the hallmarks of a tricked-out gaming machine, ready to chew through new games and applications.

Given the improvements in LCD technology over the past few years it was good to see Xenon has supplied a 17in Hyundai display with the package. It's easy on the eyes, has a decent pixel response and reasonable tilt adjustment levels – great in conjunction with the bundled RADEON 9700 PRO that rounds off the graphics element nicely.

Also included in the package is a Microsoft six-button game controller and a set of two-piece Altec Lansing speakers, which lack a little given the extravagance and intended purpose of the entertainment system – it would have been nice to see a three or five piece speaker system to really make the most of the Creative Audigy card.

Performing admirably in the benchmarking, it returned an impressive overall SYSmark2002 score of 309 – the combined effort of the increased FSB as well as dual-channel DDR RAM.
3DMark2001SE Pro again allowed the system to shine, boasting an impressive 14,089, just the sorts of figures you want to see in a high spec entertainment platform, although the 9800 PRO in the Emagen (next page) squarely beats it. Given it's also a little more expensive than the Emagen, and lacks some extra features like RAID, it's not as good value, but it's still a very impressive entertainment PC none the less.