The PCO Group Intel I7 Gaming PC

Appearance
 
The PC is enclosed in a rather suave looking Antec 1200. The bigger brother of one of the most popular gaming cases around. It’s certainly a step up form the traditional beige case that you used to find pre-made PCs coming in. Another quite industrial looking case, but a little more minimalist than the likes HAF 932.
 
The front consists entirely of mesh drive bays. The bottom 3 of which are taken up by drive 3.5″ caddies with 120mm fans in the front. Take a note that theres fan controllers built into these caddies. The top lip of the front houses the power and reset switches, as well as two USB ports and an eSATA port. 
 
Front USB_Switches
 
The left side of the case is nothing special, plain, simple black panel. But the right side sports a clear plastic window with a mesh panel protruding into it. Nestled behind the mesh is a 120mm fan mount. The top of the case is dominated by more mesh, this time housing a massive 240mm fan
 
.Side Top
 
Overall a solid choice of case by the PCOGroup here. The 1200 is definitely sturdy, weighing a fair amount even without components installed. Some may prefer a different chassis, which the PCO Group are quite happy to supply instead of the 1200 as part of their custom building service.
 
 
Internals
 
Opening the case for the first time we’re presented with a tidy arrangement of components. The coolers large orange fan being the most prominent feature. Interestingly enough it included a potentiometer, much like the ones on the front of the 1200, allowing you too control the speed of the fan. A little concerning given that if the pot was turned down to as far as it would go, would that mean that when the motherboard wanted to speed the fan up due to the CPU being under load, would it max out at that lowered voltage?
 
Over Card
Fan
 
Looking around the insides we see nothing out of the ordinary with this build. Everything is in the right places, transit hadn’t lead to loose connections or giggled parts out of place. Cable management, while not bordering OC(3)D territory, is neat and everything is kept tucked away form plain sight. I was quite happy to see no cables sprawled across the motherboard area after having seen some real bird’s nest builds from OEMs in the past.
 
HDD PSU
 
Equipped with some of the most powerful hardware on the market, this beast of a machine has the potential to blow away a lot of our benchmarks. So without further ado, lets crack on with the testing. Â