External appearance
It's green and big but not an incredible hulk.
The Icy Box I/O unit above the optical drive serves as a multicard reader and also provides two additional USB 2.0 ports. The optical drive - from Sony NEC Optiarc - is a do-it-all burner that's able to write to dual-layer discs.
Right on the top is a selection of extra connectivity.
A side-on shot gives us a peek inside. The LiquoCool Antarctic TX Extreme is used on a number of high-end Vadim systems and, as mentioned earlier but worth repeating, concurrently cools the CPU, graphics card and motherboard chipset.
The Lian-Li PC201 incorporates an upside-down component arrangement, with the graphics and add-in cards at the top and the PSU located at the bottom. From our past experiences of systems built into this chassis, that arrangement works well enough.
The motherboard provides a couple of eSATA ports and WiFi and there's dual Gigabit LAN as standard, too.
Stop! Look away, small children!
The chassis is airbrushed to show an amply-endowed siren with a look on her face that suggests... no, let's not go there.
The quality of the finish is pretty good and will make your system stand out from the crowd. Looking at the system configurator on Vadim's site, we see that the cost of the custom finish alone is a cool £1,175, including VAT.
Is it worth that much? That's a hugely subjective question but, to our way of thinking, £500 would be closer to the mark.
Here's the front of the chassis with the door closed. Again, the finish is good. Clearly, if you did own such a system, you're friends would turn... wait for it... green with envy but your bank manager's reaction might be rather different.
Let's take a peek inside...
