Mesh Ultimate Q8 Tri-SLI gaming PC

Everything about the Mesh Ultimate Q8 is imposing. The blackCoolerMaster 832 aluminium case is 62cm long and 53 cm tall, and,according to our bathroom scales, weighs in at 22kg.
We love the industrial looks of the case and a visiting (bloke)neighbour thought it looked dead impressive, though the missis thinksit's one of the ugliest things she has seen in a long time. Beauty, asthey say, is in the eye of the beholder.

Mesh's Ultimate Q3: beautiful or butt-ugly?

The cooling abilities of the CoolerMaster case are fundamental tothe Ultimate Q8 as it has the capacity to carry a huge array of fans.The top and side panels have large mesh sections that allow cooling airto flow freely. There’s a fan at the rear of the case, one at the topand three of them in the side of the case above the graphics cards andprocessor.
Release a latch and lift off the side panel and you’re faced with adoor that can carry up to four 120mm fans arranged in a square pattern.Mesh has chosen to install three Akasa fans with blue LEDs that shinethrough the vented side panel to add some geek bling.
Inside the case, there’s an EVGA 780i SLI motherboard with a Core 2Extreme QX9650 processor that runs on a 1333MHz frontside bus. It’s a3GHz 45nm 'Penryn' processor that's cooled by a ginormous Intelheatsink that is very shiny.
Below the processor there’s an angled cooler on the Nvidia 780i SLIchipset's northbridge and below that there are three Leadtek GeForce8800 GTX graphics cards.
That's right, three graphics cards.

Two graphics cards not enough for you?

Because the Mesh Q8 is the first machine we've seen that implementsNvidia's Tri-SLI technology, part of that 780i SLI chipset. Tri-SLIallows you to gang up three GeForce 8800 graphics cards that use the'G80' graphics chip - rather than the new 'G92' - on either a 680i or780i SLI chipset-based motherboard with a suitable number of PCIExpress slots.
As we say, the Q8 has three Leadtek 8800 GTX cards, each with a core clocked at 576MHz and with 768MB of memory that runs at 1800 Mhz

It’s a decent screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and it's wellup to the task of playing HD movies. You have the choice of VGA andHDMI inputs, and there are both VGA and DVI-to-HDMI cables in the box.But the panel is unexceptional and there is no height adjustment. TheIiyama is a reasonable choice as a budget 24in display, but it seems anodd companion to a PC that costs a shade under £3000.

3DMark06 Results

Longer bars are better

So let’s get down to brass tacks – does the Ultimate Q8 deliver thegoods? Any PC with a QX9650 processor and one GeForce 8800 GTX graphicscard will make a superb gaming machine, no question about it. Addingsecond and third 8800 GTX cards raises the performance significantly,and you’ll see from the test results that we only picked the worst-casescenario of Crysis to test the Mesh to its limits.

Crysis Results

Benchmarked at 1920 x 1200
Results in frames per second
Longer bars are better

Less demanding games such as Bioshock and Company of Heroesdon’t have any particular need of three GPUs when you’re running ascreen resolution of 1920 x 1200. But if you spend £1000 for a 30in TFTwith a resolution of 2560 x 1600 you’ll be in clover.
VerdictYou’re not going to spend the best part of £3000 on a gaming PCunless you’re seriously wealthy, but that tiny elite should give theMesh Ultimate Q8 serious consideration. A Tri-SLI PC will inevitably bequite noisy but seriously, that OCZ power supply needs to be sorted out.