Review: Ultraviolet Genesis XOC system. Yours for £4,500! - Systems - HEXUS.net

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.

Warranty

The Genesis XOC is backed by a two-year return-to-base warranty that begins on the invoice date. Ultraviolet provides web and telephone support in the first instance, and initial diagnosis will determine whether the system requires a trip back to HQ.

Value for money?

Can any PC costing £4,534 for a base unit be considered value for money? We've totted up the value of the individual components to be around £3,500 - bear in mind that just the motherboard, graphics cards and processor will set you back around £2,000. However, the component cost excludes the chassis' paint finish, integration and warranty. So while the Genesis XOC is wildly expensive for a base unit, the cost of truly high-end components is such that Ultraviolet isn't making huge margins on each machine.