Name: 3XS Performance GTX
Brand: Scan

TechRadar Verdict

A smartly specced out machine designed around the standout GPU at its heart

Pros

+
Great GPU
+
Smart spec
+
Decent overclock

Cons

-
Ivy Bridge is coming...

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Introduction and benchmarks

System builder, and tech retail guru, Scan, has been the first out of the blocks to bring us a machine specced out with the excellent Nvidia GTX 680. This then is that machine, the Scan 3XS Performance GTX.

And it's a very sensible machine. All clean lines, rectangular and black.

Now if that doesn't excite you we can completely sympathise; looking at it you wouldn't think it the gaming powerhouse it really is.

And therein lies the rub, the 3XS Performance GTX's gaming credentials.

The reason it's such a sensible machine is completely down to the fact that it's been designed 100% with its focus on PC gaming. And we can't help but applaud that.

You wont find any gaudy flashing LEDs or cold cathode tubes in this build, you wont see a pointless Blu-Ray drive sitting, mostly redundant in the 5.25in bay and you definitely wont find an unnecessarily feature-bloated motherboard designed for the LN2 crowd and the trickle-down effect.

All you're going to find in this build are the components hand-picked to ensure the highest frame rates the machine can manage.

This is a pure-bred games machine. That's our kind of sensible.

Vital stats

CPU

- Intel Core i5 2500K @ 4.7GHz

Motherboard

- Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 Gen 3

Graphics card

- EVGA Nvidia GTX 680

Memory

- 8GB Corsair DDR3 LP @ 1,600MHz

Storage

- Seagate 2TB SATA 6Gbps HDD

- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Benchmarks

The slightly higher CPU overclock in the Chillblast machine means that it has the edge in the CPU intensive Cinebench test, but only by a tiny margin.

The difference in graphics performance though is much greater. The Nvidia GTX 680 is the fastest GPU out there in the wild and is our choice for a serious gaming PC.

That said there are occasions where the AMD Radeon HD 7970 of the Chillblast Fusion Marine takes a lead though and that's in the system-taxing Metro 2033.

Elsewhere though it's the Scan rig all the way.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance