A peek inside
A top-down shot shows the unusual positioning of the power supply, whose fan is directly below the vent on the top of the chassis. Keeping the internals tidier would be helped by a modular PSU but, we imagine, would push the cost up a little too high.
The PSU sits directly on top of the area occupied by the CPU. Such layout dictates that the cooler be no taller than 65mm, and Scan chooses to go with the reference heatsink bundled with the processor, fitting snugly between Asus motherboard and Corsair power supply. The competent, but not exceptional, nature of the reference heatsink leads to Scan not overclocking the Core i5-4670 chip; it runs at a maximum of 3.8GHz.
There's plenty of room to house a high-end build, too, with the reference-clocked EVGA GeForce GTX 760 card looking rather puny when set against the chassis's width. Still, we're fans of the card-wide ACX heatsink that has historically proven to be quiet and able to cool efficiently. Offering more bang for your buck, we'd like to see Scan upgrade this card to the Superclocked variant, which offers a much higher core speed for a mere £5 premium. Scan is an authorised Nvidia partner and, as such, codes for Splinter Cell Blacklist and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag are included with the Nanu Gamer.
Back to the build, a lot is happening on the left-hand side, thus leaving a clear channel for the 120mm intake fan to push air over the motherboard's RAM, CPU cooler and, to some extent, the PSU.
Storage options are plentiful, with Scan choosing a Samsung DVD ReWriter and aforementioned hybrid drive, though there's still room for an SSD on the other side of the mechanical spinner. An 80mm fan, right under the PSU, helps pull warmer air out of the chassis, through the vent, and to the outside.
Finishing off this mainstream small-form-factor build, there's a 64-bit install of Microsoft's Windows 8.1 operating system and a standard three-year warranty that provides extra protection over and above that offered by the cover attached to the individual components.
This review system has been built to a particular price point of £799, though, as usual, Scan's online configurator provides an almost endless list of options and tweaks to the basic build.
Competent in every area and designed for gaming at a 1080p resolution, we'd normally see this kind of system housed in a midi-tower case. Scan and Nvidia believe there's little reason to go down that path for most people - more so as ultra-powerful graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti are available in a dual-slot form factor.
