Mesh Computers win PC Adisor Best Buy Award

Mesh Computers have picked up another award, this time in February's issue of PC Advisor, with the Mesh Ice7 5870HD winning the PC Advisor Best Buy award. This £1299 (inc VAT) system features an Intel Core i7 860 CPU paired with a Radeon 5870HD GPU giving full Directx 11 compliance, winning Mesh a full 4.5 stars out of 5.

"Compared to the competition, the 2.8GHz clock speed of the Mesh Ice7 5870 HD's Intel Core i7 860 CPU seems rather pedestrian. But this quad-core chip is easily fast enough for most users and brings several cost-saving advantages to the table."

Check out PC Advisor's full review written by Paul Monckton below, which can also be found on PC Advisor's site.

Compared to the competition, the 2.8GHz clock speed of the Mesh Ice7 5870 HD's Intel Core i7 860 CPU seems rather pedestrian. But this quad-core chip is easily fast enough for most users and brings several cost-saving advantages to the table, including the ability to use a less expensive motherboard and install memory in pairs rather than threes. Mesh therefore saves money by supplying 4GB of DDR3 RAM rather than the 6GB seen elsewhere.

As a result, there's cash left in the budget to spend elsewhere on the Mesh Ice7 5870 HD's specification. The first area Mesh has put this to good use is graphics, and the Radeon HD 5870 is a formidable DirectX 11.0 card. It delivers excellent performance in our demanding games tests and gives intensive tasks such as video encoding a processing boost.

Also included is a 1.5 terabyte (TB) hard drive and a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD). The SSD significantly improves the Mesh Ice7 5870 HD's startup times and application launches, but can quickly become full. We were unable to install Crysis, Fear and WorldBench 6 on the SSD simultaneously.

Mesh hasn't included speakers with the Ice7 5870 HD, but a Blu-ray drive and full-HD monitor offer the beginnings of an immersive multimedia experience. The display is the excellent Iiyama ProLite E2407HDSD, a 16:9 1920x1080 screen.

Verdict

Mesh’s Ice7 5870HD delivers a lot for your money, even if getting superb gaming performance and a Blu-ray drive means you must sacrifice a little raw speed. Note that the only other PC here to offer both is the Chillblast, which is £300 more expensive.

Mesh Computers Ice 5 5750 HD Wins PC Advisor Recommended

It's review time again, and this time Mesh Computers have picked up a PC Advisor Recommended award with the Ice 5 5750HD. The Ice 5 was praised for "excellent value for money, with its impressive spec including a Core i5 750 CPU, a full-HD 22in monitor, 1TB of storage and a generous software bundle."

Check out the full review written by Paul Monckton (which can also be found on PC Advisor's site) below:

Mesh's £739 Ice5 5750 HD offers excellent value for money. Its impressive spec includes a Core i5 750 CPU, a full-HD 22in monitor, a terabyte (1TB) of storage and a generous software bundle that includes a CyberLink suite.

Mesh has accidentally submitted the least expensive PC of the group, if only by £10. Originally specified with a Radeon 5770 HD graphics card, our Mesh Ice5 5750 HD review sample shipped with the 5750 HD instead. This resulted in a noticeable, although not extreme, reduction in gaming framerates. If you want to pay the extra, and we strongly suggest you do, the Mesh Ice5 5770 HD is available for £749 and should deliver a similar gaming performance to our Best Buy Arbico.

If space is at a premium, you'll appreciate the Mesh Ice5 5750 HD's diminutive system case. Note that this compact machine has less room for upgrades than the other PCs here as a result. The hard drive has been mounted vertically, for example, while the rather basic Asus motherboard has only one PCI Express x16 slot. You won't be able to add a second graphics card later, which makes the £749 Ice5 5770 HD all the more attractive.

Verdict

The Mesh Ice5 5750 HD may prove difficult to upgrade and its one-year warranty looks a little stingy, but this excellent PC offers better value for money than any other contender.