NRG Tornado eXtreme

For serious gaming and power PC users, the Altech NRG Tornado eXtreme can't be ignored. Glowing with blue LEDs, and humming with some of the latest hardware, the Altech NRG Tornado eXtreme is far from being a discrete home PC.

There are few games or applications that will push this system over the edge. It has two overclocked Inno3D GeForce 8800GTS (320MB) graphics cards (570MHz core clock, 1800MHz memory clock) linked in SLI mode, an Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard with an Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU, 2GB of Corsair DDR2 800MHz RAM and a terabyte of storage across four 250GB hard drives in a Raid 0 array.. All of this hardware is squeezed neatly into an Nine Hundred Case. The system uses a 750watt SilverStone power supply which can easily power the existing hardware, while having ample power reserved for future devices as well.

Not only is the Tornado packed with hardware, but it comes with a set of Razer gaming gear, including a set of gaming headphones, the Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headphones, a Razer Copperhead gaming mouse, a Razer Tarantula Tournament Edition gaming keyboard and a large mouse-pad. As if the system wasn't already a monster, it also comes with a gigantic Samsung 30in monitor, which is capable of running in resolutions up to 2560x1600 via DVI-I (Dual Link).

The system scored very well in our tests. In WorldBench 5 it scored an impressive 154, while in also performed well in our gaming tests. In 3DMark 2006 it scored 13577, while in FEAR it averaged 144fps (frames per second) with maximum quality settings, at a resolution of 1280x960. In Quake 4 it averaged 114fps at high quality, and at a resolution of 1280x1024. We cranked up the resolution to see how well it would handle the full resolution of the 30in Samsung monitor. Running FEAR at the max allowed resolution of 2048x1536 where it averaged 37fps. Clearly, even this powerful rig finds it hard to render at such high resolutions, though it was still playable nonetheless.

The Antec Nine Hundred gaming case has a total of five cooling fans attached. Two 120mm fans mounted on the fascia cool the hard drives, while a 120mm side mounted fan, another 120mm rear mounted fan, and a massive 200mm fan mounted on the top of the case keep the high-end components cool. The CPU has a Zalman cooler with a 100mm fan and a ring of copper pipes and fins. As a result this system is fairly loud, though the fan speed can be adjusted with individual controls or the master control found inside the case.

The cable management has been handled well for so much hardware in such a small space. All the SATA cables have been neatly bundled together with the power cables, while the excess power cables have been jammed into a spare hard drive cage at the bottom of the case. As such airflow should be fairly uninterrupted throughout the case, which helps to maintain a stable system temperature.