Physical examination I
As with the last MESH system we looked at, the Elite Extreme QX G80 is housed in an attractive wavy chassis. It may not be particularly 'bling' but it has a solid quality, with a magnetically latched door.
It's déjà vu all over again with the drive bay configuration as well, except that there are two identical Sony DVD-RWs. This still leaves a pair of 5.25in bays free, although both front 3.5in bays are taken by the floppy and 33-in-1 memory card reader. We won't list all the memory types that supports here…
You should always check out the rear of any PC you're planning to purchase. A nice clean posterior is always a bonus.
And so we come to the side of the chassis, in this case the left. Or the right, if you're standing behind it. Again, as with the last MESH PC we reviewed, the side venting has not been used for any extra fans.
The 22in widescreen is a quality unit, but as we mentioned earlier its 1,680 x 1,050 resolution isn't well matched with the 3D power of the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics. The built-in speakers are also about as much use as, well, built-in speakers.
The Logitech G15 keyboard is designed for gamers, and offers a built-in LCD panel which supplies useful gaming information. It can display FRAPS frame rates, but also works directly with certain games, such as World of Warcraft and Prey. However, the list of supported titles is quite short. More usefully, it offers 18 programmable function keys, plus backlit keys for playing in darkened rooms.
