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.

Mesh Computers begin 2010 with a Review Win

Happy new year 2010 from Mesh Computers, and its shaping up to be a good year already with a review win for the Matrix II 925 MX. Expertreviews.co.uk gave the PC a full 5 out of 5 stars rating, with Computer Shopper also heaping praise on the machine in the February '10 issue.

"Mesh's Matrix II is stunningly quick in Windows and ideal if you do a lot of video or photo editing"

For the full review written by Alan Lu at expertreviews.co.uk take a look below:

Mesh's Matrix II 925 MX is a real powerhouse thanks to a 2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X4 925 processor and 4GB of RAM. This combination meant this PC did very well in our application benchmarks. Its overall score of 101 was the best we've seen for a PC at this price. The one downside is that the processor fan is quite loud. This can easily be replaced with a quieter fan if you find the noise distracting, though.

The Matrix II 925 MX was less impressive in our game tests. Its integrated Radeon 4200 graphics managed only single-digit scores in our gaming benchmarks. A more powerful PCI Express x16 graphics card can be added to boost performance, but the 300W power supply may not provide enough energy for power-hungry graphics cards as well as other upgrades and may need to be replaced.

Although the Matrix II isn't brimming with as many internal expansion options as other PCs we've seen, there's space for another optical drive. There are also two 3?in bays, both of which can be used for internal devices such as hard disks or external devices such as a memory card reader or floppy drive. Unlike other PCs we've seen, it has enough SATA ports to connect all the devices it has bays for. There are two free RAM slots and a massive 16GB of RAM can be fitted.

There are two PCI slots and a PCI Express x1 slot for accommodating peripherals such as TV tuners or wireless adaptors. There are also coaxial and optical S/PDIF ports for connecting a surround-sound amplifier.

Mesh's Matrix II 925 MX is a great PC if you need fast application performance on a budget. However, you'll need to budget more for a dedicated graphics card to replace its weak integrated chip if you want to play games and it's irritatingly loud, so it's not perfect.

Mesh Computers win PC Advisor Best Buy Award with the Mesh Ice 7 DX11

Mesh Computers have won the PC Advisor Best Buy Award for the Mesh Ice DX11. Check out the full review below from PC Advisor, written by Paul Monckton

The Mesh Ice 7 DX11 Windows 7 desktop PC offers staggering gaming performance with an HD 5850 chip under its belt.


With the release of AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards, we're seeing the first DirectX 11.0-capable PCs submitted to our Test Centre. It's no surprise that all four of the new PCs featured here include a 1GB Radeon HD 5850 card, including the Mesh Ice 7 DX11.

The strongest overall performance is delivered by the Mesh Ice 7 DX11. Despite its Intel Core i7 920 processor having now been discontinued, it's still widely available and offers great value for money. The performance of this chip is superb, propelling the Mesh to a WorldBench 6 speed score of 139 points.

A 6GB allocation of DDR3 RAM is provided, fitted into an Asus P6T SE motherboard. This is a good offering - the two machines based on Intel's newer Core i7 860 CPU come with only 4GB - yet the price of the Mesh Ice 7 DX11 remains reasonable.

Gaming performance is very good indeed, and the Mesh Ice 7 DX11's HD 5850 delivers a noticeable increase in performance over the HD 4890 found in older systems in this price category. It comes with support for DirectX 11.0, which is necessary for several forthcoming games as well as some new functions built into Windows 7.

A pair of 500GB hard drives are provided in a Raid 0 configuration. This setup offers enhanced performance over single-drive offerings, but it takes only one drive to fail in the Mesh Ice 7 DX11 for you to lose the data stored on both.

The Mesh Ice 7 DX11's 22in full-HD monitor delivers high-quality images. You don't get a Blu-ray drive, but this remains an excellent PC for both work and gaming.

Mesh Matrix II 550BE Wins PC Advisor Best Buy Award!

The accolades keep rolling in for Mesh Computers at the moment, with the Mesh Matrix II 550BE winning the PC Advisor Best Buy Award. The Verdict was that "The Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA offers unbeatable value and class-leading performance. If you want a gaming PC for less than £500, nothing else here comes close."

See the full review from PC Advisor written by Paul Monckton below:

Systems at this price point always involve compromises - a meaty processor or a powerful graphics card will obliterate a £500 budget. But the Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA not only achieves the highest WorldBench 6 real-world speed score of the group, it also provides staggering gaming performance that leaves the competition stuttering and flickering in its wake.

We were somewhat surprised to find an AMD CPU under the hood of our Best Buy machine, and the Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA's 3.1GHz Phenom II X2 500 BE marks a turn-around for our previously Intel-dominated PC charts.

All the systems reviewed here feature ATI graphics cards, but the Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA's HD 4870 outclasses the competition and takes gaming to a new level of performance.

Other components are standard fare, with the Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA's smart black case concealing 4GB of DDR2 memory and a 500GB hard drive. The 19in display is perfectly acceptable but lacks a digital input. Usefully, Mesh preinstalls the CyberLink DVD suite.

One slight niggle, however, is the Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA's one-year warranty, which is disappointing in comparison with the two-year guarantees offered elsewhere.

Verdict

The Mesh Matrix II 550BE PCA offers unbeatable value and class-leading performance. If you want a gaming PC for less than £500, nothing else here comes close.

Mesh Matrix II 5870XT wins PC Pro Recommended!

Mesh Computers with the Mesh Matrix II 5870XT has picked up a second award - this time from PC Pro giving it an A-List rating. Check out the full review below from PC Pro reviewer Mike Jennings.

It may be a mere six months since ATI launched the Radeon HD 4890 as its single-GPU flagbearer, but the HD 5870 wasted no time in usurping it last month. The new card deservedly won a place on the A List on its PC Pro debut, and Mesh is the first manufacturer to include it in its Matrix II 5870XT PC.

The HD 5870 certainly boasts impressive credentials: it’s ATI’s first desktop 40nm part, the world’s first DirectX 11 GPU and boasts 1,600 stream processors, 2.15 billion transistors and a core clock speed of 850MHz, alongside 1GB of 1,200MHz GDDR5 memory.

This tantalising specification resulted in excellent gaming performance. In our 1,920 x 1,200 very high quality Crysis test, for instance, the Mesh returned an impressive average framerate of 39fps. More demanding tests didn’t faze the card, either; in fact, only a mammoth 2,650 x 1,600 test at very high settings caused the HD 5870 problems – it only managed 24fps – but you'll only reach that resolution if you shell out a lot more on a huge 30in TFT. Nevertheless, it’s an excellent performance that’s only marginally bettered by recent PCs we've reviewed with dual GPUs.

Partnering this groundbreaking GPU is a 3.2GHz AMD Phenom II X4 965 processor, one of the most powerful quad-core parts in AMD’s range. It may not be as revolutionary as the graphics card, but the Mesh still delivered an excellent result of 2.03 in our suite of application benchmarks.

This score may not see the Mesh challenging its A-Listed competitors for raw power – the Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire used an overclocked Intel Core i5 chip to score 2.45 in our benchmarks – but the Matrix II is still one of the fastest AMD-based systems we’ve seen and offers more than enough speed to cope with demanding applications.

Mesh has packed 4GB of RAM, a 1TB hard disk and a Blu-ray drive into the Matrix II 5870XT, to ensure there’s plenty of space for large media collections, as well as the capacity to play high-definition movies.

It's all crammed into the popular NZXT Hush case. It may not look as sleek or feel as sturdy as other favourites such as the Antec Nine Hundred Two, but the Hush’s main strength is noise prevention: layers of sound-absorbing foam and dozens of rubber washers keep vibrations and hums to a minimum.

The result is a system that, while far from silent, is relatively quiet for such a powerful beast. The Akasa Nero CPU heatsink and that graphics card cooler mean there’s a constant whirr from the side of the chassis but, thankfully, it’s kept to a manageable level and is unlikely to prove distracting.

The chassis is neat and tidy elsewhere, with bundles of cables lashed together and out of sight, although the bulky components mean working inside is tricky. The two spare DIMM sockets are very close to the Akasa Nero, for instance, and adding a new hard disk into one of the four empty, tool-free bays will likely require removal of the graphics card.

Outside the case, Mesh has included decent peripherals. The Iiyama ProLite E2407HDS offers a full-HD resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, with solid image quality, especially when handling lighter tones –although we did notice backlight bleed at both the top and bottom of the screen. The choice of Logitech Deluxe 660 wireless keyboard and mouse is good, although perhaps lacking the precision demanded by serious gamers.

With all the power inside, we assumed the Mesh would tip the scales above £1,000 but it comes in at a reasonable £912 exc VAT. This looks good value when stacked up against its A List competition. The £869 Mesh Elite Ice 5 Pro can't match the Mesh for gaming prowess, while the two graphics cards of the £1,199 Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire proved barely faster for that wedge of extra cash.

It’s this combination of price and performance that makes the Mesh so tempting. It may fall slightly behind some rivals in our 2D tests, but it's still a very fast machine, and its gaming performance is top class without resorting to a giant graphics card that sounds like a Hoover. If you’re searching for a cutting-edge gaming rig that doesn’t break the bank, the Mesh Matrix II 5870XT is flavour of the month.

MESH Matrix II 955BE Hush wins ComputerActive Buy IT award!

It's award time again, and Mesh have scooped another one - this time its the ComputerActive Buy IT award. The MESH Matrix II 955BE Hush was awarded 5 / 5 stars and praised for its excellent computing performance, high quality 22in widescreen monitor and quiet operation.

Take a look at the full review below from Orestis Bastounis over at Computeractive.

"Portable computers such as laptops and netbooks are fine if you have to get things done on the move.

However, they don’t cope particularly well with demanding tasks such as video editing or playing recent games. To do that you will need a more powerful computer, and that means a desktop PC such as the Mesh Matrix II 955BE Hush.

The Hush takes its name from the NZXT Hush case it comes in, which is designed to be quiet.

The case’s blue light and curved door make it look attractive and futuristic, although that only extends to the front panel: the rest of the case is a much more generic-looking black number.

A layer of foam covers the inside to muffle noise from the fans and hard disk. In use, we found the noise dampening to be fairly effective at keeping the PC quieter than most, although it is far from silent.

Mesh has chosen an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black processor, an ATI Radeon HD4870 video card and 4GB of main system memory in the Hush.

The combination of a powerful processor and video card is essential for playing the most up-to-date PC games in high resolution and with the detail settings turned up.

Although there are faster alternatives available, these would have raised the price of the Hush considerably.

Mesh is selling the entire computer for £799 (excluding delivery) so has chosen wisely, as both the processor and video card offer excellent value and are easily capable of playing any game on the market today.

This price also includes a widescreen 22in Iiyama ProLite monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

That’s the same as most widescreen television programmes so you wont have to put up with black bars when watching shows (most computer widescreens have a 16:10 aspect ratio).

Although the screen is too small to make high-definition video a big deal, the Hush also comes with a Blu-ray drive, which will read and write DVDs and CDs as well as reading Blu-ray discs and HD DVDs, the short-lived former rival to Blu-ray.

Although the 22in screen is not an expensive model, its picture quality and colour representation were very impressive.

The Hush comes with Windows Vista 64-bit installed on the 750GB hard disk, which should be enough storage for most people, unless you have an exceptionally large music collection.

However, Mesh could have easily included a larger 1TB disk without adding much to the cost.

There is plenty of room for expansion, both inside and outside: it has 12 USB ports at the back, along with surround sound outputs.

It also includes a Logitech cordless keyboard and mouse, plus Microsoft Works 8.5 for word processing, spreadsheets and other office tasks.

Although this is a good-value gaming computer, at £799 it's slightly more expensive than similar PCs from other retailers and some of Mesh's own cheaper products.

The Matrix II Hush does offer superb gaming performance, though, and although it isn't silent, the fact that it’s quieter than most will be a bonus, as is the excellent monitor."

Mesh XGS PII 955CS wins Computer Shopper Best Buy award

At MESH we always try to put together award winning systems, and we're happy to say that we've done it again with the Mesh XGS PII 955CS, which has just been awarded a Best Buy by Computer Shopper magazine.

The XGS PII 955CS recorded 5 out of 5 stars rating and Computer Shopper reviewer Kat Orphanides summed up the review as saying "We're not sure how Mesh can provide 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard disk and a top-notch processor for only £800, but we're certainly impressed"

To celebrate this win, MESH are offering a £50 discount of the ticket price on this system - simply use the voucher code 50XGS230809G to qualify!

For the full review, please visit expertreviews.co.uk or read the whole thing below.

Mesh's XGS PII 955CS has a 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor, the fastest in AMD's current range, and a huge 8GB of memory. This combination gives excellent performance at a reasonable price. The Overall score of 112 in our application benchmarks was 12 per cent quicker than our reference PC. Most users won't make full use of all that memory, but those editing HD video will certainly feel the benefits. If you need even more power, the Black Edition processor gives plenty of overclocking options.

The ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics card helped the 955CS to a high frame rate of 54.8fps in Call of Duty 4 and 25.1fps on the challenging Crysis test. It's easy to boost frame rates in Crysis by reducing the anti-aliasing setting. We've seen more powerful cards in £800 PCs before, but unless you're a serious gamer the HD 4770 is a good choice, which is why it's our current Best Buy.

All this impressive hardware is slotted into Mesh's latest own-brand chassis. The black-and-red case looks rather snazzy, and should please anyone

who likes their PC to stand out. Inside, there's a 1TB hard disk for storage, and plenty of room to install extra drives. We liked the convenient USB, eSATA, FireWire and audio ports mounted above the front fascia. It's well built, but although it has vibration-dampening hard disk caddies, there's no other sound-proofing. This makes it a bit noisy when compared to systems with sound-proofed cases such as Mesh's award-winning Matrix II 940CS. It's also power-hungry, consuming 148W when simply idling.

The Asus M4A79 Pro motherboard is well designed, with everything sensibly laid out. With the graphics card in place, only one of the two PCI-E x1 slots is available. However, there are three PCI slots, too, so you shouldn't have any trouble adding expansion cards.

Logitech's Deluxe 660 cordless keyboard and mouse set mean you aren't tied to your PC with cables. They work well enough, but the keyboard feels somewhat spongy. The 22in widescreen Iiyama ProLite E2208HDS monitor is outstanding, with a fast 2ms response time, a 1,920x1,080 resolution and great image quality. Colour saturation wasn't as vivid as we've seen from some screens, but this is an excellent display whether you want to play games, watch HD movies or work with multiple applications.

The XGS PII 955CS is fantastic value. It comes with more processor power and RAM than any similarly priced system we've seen. The ATI Radeon HD 4770's performance isn't powerful enough to excite serious gamers, but it's still quick enough to handle the latest games. The XGS PII 955CS is a great choice for those wanting a really powerful PC. It wins our Best Buy award.

Mesh Elite Ice 7 wins PC Advisor Recommended Award

PC Advisor Magazine has awarded the Mesh Elite Ice 7 the PC Advisor Recommended Award. This £799 system was quoted as having "[The Mesh Elite Ice 7] is a good all-round PC system, featuring the Intel Core i7 920 processor at a new low price."

Here's an excerpt from the review

This PC system from Mesh represents a breakthrough specification at the price.

Priced at £749, the Mesh Elite Ice 7 is the first system we've seen at this price to include the Intel Core i7 processor, now reduced in price by Intel. Until now, to get one of Intel's quad-core i7 CPUs, system prices would be closer to £1,000.

The Mesh Elite Ice 7 is built around a Mesh-branded case, relatively solid and a step-up from some of the flimsier boxes we see in the Test Centre. On the silver-painted plastic front panel is a dual-layer DVD writer, and four different slots for various memory cards. Also here you'll find two USB plus a full-size FireWire 400 port.

An Asus P6T SE motherboard includes the usual raft of pre-configured ports, accessible from the rear panel, with interesting extras such as Toslink digital optical audio, another FireWire port, and even eSATA. Six RAM slots are populated by three 1GB cards, making future upgrades straightforward.

Other expansion possibilities include space for two more hard disks and three optical drives.

Aside from the two cooling fans built into the HEC 550W power supply, three more fans can be found: on the case rear panel, over the CPU and on the HIS-branded ATI HD 4850 graphics card. Overall, system noise was moderate.

Included in the package price is a 22in widescreen LCD monitor, the PCA Gold Award-winning Iiyama E2208HDS. Based on a 1920-1080 full-HD TN panel, it gives not the most colourful of images, but instead errs toward the neutral side. Combine that with its matt anti-glare finish, and you should find it to be more relaxing for long-term use than any shiny screen or one that over-saturates colour.

For the full review, please see PC Advisor's site, then head over to our site to see the Mesh Elite Ice 7