Altech was the first through the door with a high-end Core 2 PC system this month. Using an Antec Plus View II case as its base it looks very good with its clear window and blue LED-lit fans shining through.

The stylish 20.1in widescreen Samsung LCD matches it too. The 1680 x 1050 resolution is comfortable to view and offers a crisp and clear desktop. Horizontal viewing angles are good but vertical angles are mediocre, however, colours are good even without a glossy coating and lag was minimal thanks to a 6ms response time.

But it’s performance that’s king in this price bracket, and with Intel’s fastest, sub-Extreme Edition, 2.66GHz E6700 Core 2 processor (with a whopping 4MB of level 2 cache) things looked promising. Altech only supplies cheap PC2-5300 RAM rather than the full speed PC2-6400 but, even so, when combined with the 300GB Samsung hard disk, it managed a staggering 1.59 in our benchmarks. This makes it almost 60 percent faster than our ‘speedy’ reference PC and 30 percent faster than our previously A-Listed AMD-based PC from Trinity International (May 2006, page 36). If you need a PC that can cope with hardcore encoding and other strenuous tasks, this is it.

It stormed through our 3D tests, too. While it should be noted that Nvidia’s two-cards-in-one 7950 GX2 won’t work optimally in games that Nvidia hasn’t specifically tailored drivers for, when it works, it works very well indeed. Using our punishing 1600 x 1200 high-end tests it averaged 65.4fps in Far Cry (with HDR) and 47.2fps in Call of Duty 2 (4x AA, 8x AF) both at 1600 x 1200. There’s no lack of firepower.

Altech also provides a motherboard with an extra graphics slot. Thus, if it feels slow in the future, you can add another 7950 for Quad-SLI power. Other expansion is possible thanks to two PCI slots and a 1x PCI Express slot. There’s room for three more hard disks, three 5.25in drives and two more sticks of RAM. It’s also Viiv-compatible (Windows Media Center Edition is also installed - albeit without remote and tuner), should you want to turn it into a media server. At the back are six audio jacks, four USB 2 ports, FireWire, coaxial S/PDIF out, parallel and serial ports. At the front are two USB 2 ports, audio jacks and a FireWire port.

We like how Altech has put some effort into tidying inner cables which enhances airflow. Despite all the power, it’s not noisy and produces a constant but unobtrusive whir.

Other features include Creative’s SBS 580 5.1 speakers which look small but create a well-rounded, loud and punchy sound in both music and games. The wireless Microsoft keyboard (and mouse) is well featured and comfortable as is the mouse. Our only gripe is the measily one year RTB warranty. But that doesn’t change the fact this is the best high-end system we’ve seen, and at $3300 it’s good value too.