Review: Scan 3XS C2D-0C

Scan’s 3XS C2D-OC stands out in a number of ways – not least because of the cool blue neon glow emanating through its see-through side panel.

The neon strip inside the unit is purely for decoration, but the see-through side panel also gives you a good view of the unusual liquid cooling system installed in the machine.

The cooling system is there for a more practical reason, though, as Scan has overclocked the Core 2 Duo E6600 processor from its standard 2.4GHz right up to 3GHz.

Not surprisingly, the 3XS C2D-OC’s performance benefits significantly from this overclocking and takes top place in most of our benchmarking tests.

To back up the strong processor performance, Scan has also included an Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTX graphics card with 256MB of video memory. That combination produces a score of 129fps in our Far Cry test – one of the highest scores we’ve ever seen in that particular test.

You even have a spare x16 PCI Express slot available for a second graphics card, so the 3XS C2D-OC should provide enough performance to keep even hardcore gamers happy for years to come.

We also like the three ‘hot swap’ drive bays located on the machine’s front panel, which pop open at the press of a button and allow you to insert or remove a hard disk. The supplied 300GB hard disk uses one of these bays, leaving the other two empty for additional upgrades.

Scan has opted for the Media Center Edition of Windows XP, along with a TV tuner card, so you have the makings of a good home-entertainment system as well. It might have been useful to have 2GB of Ram rather than the 1GB provided by Scan, but the sheer performance of the 3XS C2D-OC ensures that this PC should earn its keep for a long time to come.

This article is part of a group test of £1,499 Conroe PCs.
See also
Chillblast Hardco re 6600 OC
Evesham Solar Plus
Mesh Elite E6600 PCW
PC Nextday Zoostorm 5-7402 Edge PC
Apple launches Xeon processor in Mac Pro
Core 2 Duo numbering system

Performance graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downloads

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