Concluding thoughts
There's more than one method of building of high-performance system. Scan has shown us that. Going down the enthusiasts' route of overclocking the CPU and motherboard has paid dividends for the 3XS-OC system. Scan chose to add an extra 20% FSB and RAM oomph to a regular 2.6GHz 200MHz FSB Pentium 4 and ABIT Springdale motherboard. Some of Corsair's finest (and most expensive) RAM was used to guarantee the preferred synchronous FSB and dual-channel DRAM combination. We're pleased that Scan has been able to manage it without the need for additional voltage to the CPU. What we're not so enamoured about, though, is in the use of a non-PAT-enabled Springdale motherboard. The Scan's benchmarks, running at 3.12GHz, fell a little shy of expectation. That probably has more to do with the relaxed memory timings and lack of chipset optimisation than anything else. If we were to build a performance system, we'd want the very last ounce of performance out of it, and that includes a fully tweaked motherboard's BIOS.Performance is still good for a PC costing £1100 excluding VAT. The excellent TFT and bulletproof build quality are at the top of the praise list. There's more than ample room to convert the Scan 3XS-OC into a powerful server, such is the case's drive-holding capacity and layout. We also like the attention paid to cooling; the fans just hum away and don't cause the high-pitched sound profile that we found on the Evesham, for example. Any self-respecting PC over £1000 needs to possess multiformat rewriting ability. Scan's NEC DVD-ReWriter and Samsung 16x DVD-ROM provide the necessary means. 8x drives are now becoming widely available, but we can't really criticise Scan's choice.
We're more than happy with the reliability of the test system. That's only mentioned due to its overclocked nature. What doesn't please us as much is the 1-year on-site warranty. Other manufacturers can fit in a full 3-year warranty with the first 2 years usually on-site. That's an important selling point when purchasing from an integrator. An extended warranty is available, but it pushes the price up towards the MESH and Evesham systems. We don't have further qualms. Prebuilt systems have come a long way in a few years. If Scan can address the slight warranty aspect of the 3XS-OC we'd look towards recommending it. The troubling aspect for all system integrators is the quality of other firms' machines. It's rare to see a bad example and we expect to see top-notch machines. We appreciate Scan's attempts to make the most of a given set of hardware, and we hope to see more overclocked examples in the near future.
Highs
Super build quality
Card reader
Excellent TFT
Rock-solid stability
Price
Lows
Software package isn't great
Comparatively weak warranty
The motherboard's performance potential hasn't been fully realised
