Mesh Matrix II 955BE Hush Gaming PC

 

Aside from products that truly are directly comparable to a surprise that a young reprobate may leave on your doorstep consisting of a flaming brown paper bag that conceals a moderate helping of their pet’s droppings, I strongly believe that any product is an excellent purchase…at the right price. What we have here is an all in one desktop package utilising today’s high end components, a respectable keyboard/mouse and a proven 22” widescreen monitor with a price tag of £799 inclusive of VAT. To those who spec and build computers on a fairly regular basis, you may have grunted with a confused “huh?” or perhaps at least raised an eyebrow. To those, who think I’m a blithering idiot and haven’t the faintest about what I’m trying to say, I invite you to take a look at the graph below. Do note that whenever a particular component could not be located on retailer websites, another item of equivalent specification was chosen.

 

 

The graph details the total price to buy the Mesh Matrix II 955BE Hush computer in parts from two hardware websites. Before anyone asks, no there’s nothing wrong with the data. It is infact around £130 cheaper to buy this high end AMD Phenom II Quad Core computer prebuilt from a computer company than to buy it in parts and spend time putting it together. Our review sample was built to a very high standard with fabulous cable management as shown by the photographs presented earlier. Mesh’s customer support is located in the UK and in our own experience we were able to get through to customer services within 5 minutes.

 

Other than a couple of nitty gritty moans in the review, I struggled to find many reasons to not recommend this computer. It’s cheaper than building it yourself, the components selected are of high quality, the operating system hasn’t been bloated with dozens of trials, it’s overclockable and it performed very well throughout our entire testing process. The major annoyances about the computer lay with noise levels from the graphics card and the NZXT Hush’s ability to maintain lower ambient case temperatures.

 

If I were to suggest anything to Mesh, it’d be to remove the NZXT Hush case from the “Gaming” and “Performance” line-up of computers and replace it with something that offers more airflow, such as the Antec Three Hundred. Respectable build quality and a number of 120mm/140mm fans that operate quietly on low speed. Next, would be to withdraw the use of HEC power supplies, or at least the HEC 550W unit. It’s a reliable unit and I wouldn’t for a moment be concerned about it burning my house down but it’s small fans are noticeable under extended periods of load and they don’t particularly help exhaust heat from the rest of the case either. An 80PLUS certified unit from OCZ, Corsair, Enermax and others are likely to be similarly priced and sport 120mm exhaust fans that will inevitably reduce ambient case temperatures and as a result prevent CPU and GPU fans from having to operate so fast. On the same token, it would also be wise to be certain that the particular graphics card being used in the system does adjust it’s own fan speed as a high end graphics card like the HD 4870 will operate very loudly without such automated control. These changes would have a positive effect on both temperatures and noise and in the long term would result in happier customers.

 

So here’s the verdict. Prebuilt computers have come a long way from what they used to be and if you don’t have the effort or wish to spare the effort of building one yourself, there are prebuilt alternatives available. The Matrix II 955BE Hush is an example of this, offering a stunning value for money, high performance and no nonsense piece of kit. Never had I thought that I’d ever return to purchasing a prebuilt computer but having had a glimpse of today’s offerings, maybe one day I will.

 

 

– Fabulous performance

– Value for money is second to none

– Offers full support for overclocking

– Upgradeable.

 

– While upgradeable, opening the side panel will physically void the system’s warranty seal.

– No Operating System CD included.

– Noise levels were unnecessarily high. Any higher and this point would’ve made it to “The Bad”.

 

– None.