Fresh out of the Pacific and ready to blow your socks off.

From the moment the blue-lit NRG Typhoon roared into life we knew we had a monster on our hands.

Delving inside we couldn't help but be impressed by the neatly secured hardware and well routed cables. At the heart of this machine lies an Intel quad-core i5 760 CPU sitting in a Gigabyte GA-PSSA UD3P motherboard. This potent combination lets the Altech boffins clock the CPU up to 4GHz  - a massive boost over the stock 2.8GHz frequency. 8GB of 1,6OOMHz Corsair DDR3 and a 1TB HDD keep your games running smoothly.

Graphics are handled by a Radeon 5850 with 1GB of GDDR5. This powerful GPU has an HDMI output as well as DVI and VGA ports, so you can easily connect multiple monitors in Eyefinity. We tested with 3DMark Vantage and Far Cry 2. The Typhoon swamped us with a P15620 score and 87fps respectively.

It's not the quietest PC, with all the fans seemingly set to full speed. On the plus Side, temperatures inside were very stable under load. We recommend checking for dust build - up, as it does a good job as a vacuum cleaner. The NRG has all the Standard features of a gaming machine such as 12 USB ports, Gigabit LAN, front-mount eSATA, audio and USB ports as well as 5.1 surround sound. You also get two USB 3.0 ports and internal SATA 6Gbit/s ' connections. Sadly the 1TB HDD is only SATA 3Gbit/s, but you do get a BIu-ray drive. Such a system wouldn't be complete without Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. While the Typhoon is built by Altech for an RRP of $1,799.

Lindsay Handmer

APC - January 2011