Internal appearance, bundle, warranty, pricing thoughts
Now, that's better, isn't it? A top-mounted radiator is cooled by a couple of slow-spinning 120mm fans than can be adjusted by the installed SpeedFan software.
A lighting kit is provided to show off the innards, giving a further nod towards the enthusiast bearing of the machine. The colour can be chosen at the time of purchase.
Moving on to the bottom of the chassis, here's the second radiator and that's cooled by another couple of fans.
Three hard drives take up most of the available room in the caddy which, again, is cooled by another slow-spinning fan. Further drives would need to be located in spare 5.25in bays, using appropriate adaptors.
A close-up of the OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 memory that's actually run at under specification - 783MHz with 4-4-4-12-2T timings. We're not sure why this is the case, as the eVGA nForce 680i Black Pearl has a bewildering range of memory ratios that can be independently set of the CPU speed.
Here's around £1,100 worth of graphics hardware, courtesy of eVGA. A couple of pre-overclocked - a popular theme - GeForce 8800 Ultras in SLI, liquid-cooled, of course.
Internal build quality and cable routing are good but not fantastic. Our sample's reservoir had slipped out of place in transit and the left-hand 120mm radiator fan made a scratch-like sound every second or so. Ultraviolet now uses quieter Akasa fans on production models, though. Further, Ultraviolet assures us that the method used to secure fittings has now been revamped such that shipping models should arrive in pristine condition.
Although a monitor isn't standard, Ultraviolet shipped the sample system with a 22in Samsung 1680 x 1050 LCD TFT. We'd have opted for a 30in WQXGA model. After all, if you're spending £4,500 on a base unit, what's another £1,000? We note that Ultraviolet's largest monitor option is the 22in model.
The finishing kit is good, as it should be. A restore CD is provided to bring the system back to factory-default status should software problems arise. The system ships with Windows XP Professional SP2 but Vista Premium is available instead at no extra cost.
