TechRadar Verdict
A smartly specced out machine designed around the standout GPU at its heart
Pros
- +
Great GPU
- +
Smart spec
- +
Decent overclock
Cons
- -
Ivy Bridge is coming...
Why you can trust TechRadar
System builder, and tech retail guru, Scan, has been the first out of the blocks to bring us a machine specced out with the excellent Nvidia GTX 680. This then is that machine, the Scan 3XS Performance GTX.
And it's a very sensible machine. All clean lines, rectangular and black.
Now if that doesn't excite you we can completely sympathise; looking at it you wouldn't think it the gaming powerhouse it really is.
And therein lies the rub, the 3XS Performance GTX's gaming credentials.
The reason it's such a sensible machine is completely down to the fact that it's been designed 100% with its focus on PC gaming. And we can't help but applaud that.
You wont find any gaudy flashing LEDs or cold cathode tubes in this build, you wont see a pointless Blu-Ray drive sitting, mostly redundant in the 5.25in bay and you definitely wont find an unnecessarily feature-bloated motherboard designed for the LN2 crowd and the trickle-down effect.
All you're going to find in this build are the components hand-picked to ensure the highest frame rates the machine can manage.
This is a pure-bred games machine. That's our kind of sensible.
Vital stats
CPU
- Intel Core i5 2500K @ 4.7GHz
Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 Gen 3
Graphics card
- EVGA Nvidia GTX 680
Memory
- 8GB Corsair DDR3 LP @ 1,600MHz
Storage
- Seagate 2TB SATA 6Gbps HDD
OS
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Benchmarks
The slightly higher CPU overclock in the Chillblast machine means that it has the edge in the CPU intensive Cinebench test, but only by a tiny margin.
The difference in graphics performance though is much greater. The Nvidia GTX 680 is the fastest GPU out there in the wild and is our choice for a serious gaming PC.
That said there are occasions where the AMD Radeon HD 7970 of the Chillblast Fusion Marine takes a lead though and that's in the system-taxing Metro 2033.
Elsewhere though it's the Scan rig all the way.
DirectX 11 tessellation performance
DirectX 11 gaming performance
DirectX 10 gaming performance
CPU rendering performance
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