Introduction
SCAN 3XS-M SYSTEM REVIEW
The inimitable joy of perusing through various on-line vendors' catalogues. The glee of researching all manner of components; reading reviews from 'sites with a careful eye on exactly what's hot and what's not. The anticipation of waiting for all your expertly chosen parts to arrive. Those are some of the feeling that cross a first-time PC builder. Of course, building your own system has it advantages. However, what happens when you can't get everything to work ?. What about the immense frustration that accompanies an imperfect system build ?. And what to do when some constituent part gives up its ghost without warning ?.
Many builders swear, literally, never to lay eyes on a motherboard or hard drive again. The heart-wrenching, stomache-churning feeling of crushing a CPU is enough to send sane people into a fit of rage. Help is at hand, though.
At a rough guess, up until 5 years ago, pre-built systems often skimped on quality parts - all in the name of cost. Now, however, reading through the specifications of vendors' machines reads like a who's who of the components world. There's rarely a poor component, and overall quality is now top notch. Factor in the considerable warranties offered by almost everyone, and then consider just how 'cheap' decent pre-built systems have become, you'll soon see why even a number of enthusiasts have considered hassle-free systems.
All this leads us on to a vendor more famed for selling individual components. Scan has been plying its online trade for some time now, and therefore it makes perfect sense for a component vendor to amalgamate some of the better selling parts into a number of pre-configured systems. Scan's 3XS range of systems, almost universally configurable, caused us to raise a curious eyebrow. That curious, upturned eyebrow morphed into two large boxes a week or so later. HEXUS reviewing pre-built systems ?. Whatever next ?. Reviewing plasma screens, we hope.
