Review: Scan 3XS H55 - Radius Edition GTX

Simon · Aug 24, 2010, 12:48:37

Scan systems don't turn up too often in the PC Pro Labs but, when they do, they're usually a treat. As soon as the 3XS H55 arrived, we unscrewed the side panel from the Silverstone PS05 chassis to find possibly the tidiest internals we've ever seen.

We're not talking binding cables together and hiding them behind motherboard trays, either: cables are strapped to the side of the case in neat vertical lines, with the main power lead running through the middle. SATA cables and other wires emerge only when they're needed to plug into relevant sockets. Those heading to the front panel are lashed at the base, and those for the graphics card and hard disks are tied to the metallic struts of the hard disk bays.

Read more: Scan 3XS H55 - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/360535/scan-3xs-h55-radius-edition-gtx

I'm half tempted...

Glenn · Aug 24, 2010, 12:58:17

So does it use an i7 or i5 CPU? I can't find a i7-750 anywhere, but I can find a i5-750.

Glenn · Aug 24, 2010, 13:04:27

Looks like it is an i5-750 going by the motherboard (wrong chipset for the i7) and clockspeed http://www.pcworld.com/article/171556/intels_new_core_i7_and_core_i5_processors_explained.html

Rik · Aug 24, 2010, 13:42:41

The description certainly sounds like my Scan build.

Niall · Aug 24, 2010, 17:15:08

That's really odd. The power usage on it is REALLY low. I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I saw 450W on the PSU.

I can't say I'm a fan of the motherboard though, and these days a 4gb limit on ram is a bit low. Sure you'll be able to play games, use Photoshop etc, but it's not going to last you that long. My system is pretty much the same as that and I'm seeing slowdown creeping in to things now, which is why I'm upgrading in a few months.

My concern would be upgrading if I bought that. If you need to change cables, it looks like it could be a bit of an issue. Replacing the motherboard seems incredibly easy with all that space though. That's really nice.

A better motherboard, CPU and PSU and that would be a very interesting buy.

Technical Ben · Aug 24, 2010, 22:32:26

Quote from: Niall on Aug 24, 2010, 17:15:08
That's really odd. The power usage on it is REALLY low. I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I saw 450W on the PSU.

I can't say I'm a fan of the motherboard though, and these days a 4gb limit on ram is a bit low. Sure you'll be able to play games, use Photoshop etc, but it's not going to last you that long. My system is pretty much the same as that and I'm seeing slowdown creeping in to things now, which is why I'm upgrading in a few months.

My concern would be upgrading if I bought that. If you need to change cables, it looks like it could be a bit of an issue. Replacing the motherboard seems incredibly easy with all that space though. That's really nice.

A better motherboard, CPU and PSU and that would be a very interesting buy.

I'm a cheap skate. I got 2GB.

But a beefy PSU. Although, a lot of the new chips and graphics cards are really efficient now.

Niall · Aug 24, 2010, 22:42:32

I only went up to 4gb because I upgraded from XP to Vista (sort of an upgrade

) and wanted more ram to speed things up a bit. Also a few of the newer games started demanding it, especially WoW. That was a problem as it just eats memory and pages the hard drive like mad in high population areas. Photoshop is much faster too as you increase the memory.

I can seriously see the new games in the next year or so demanding a high amount of memory to support the graphics cards coming out. SSD drives are a godsend now as they have such a high transfer rate, and I'm drooling at the thought of those in raid with a high end CPU and a good amount of ram. A friend of mine has a simple set up using just one with a dual core CPU, and he was saying that programs install incredibly fast. Windows 7 installed in 10-15 minutes, where it took twice that on my dual core system with a 7200rpm 16mb sata drive.

Oo the nerd in me is excited

Technical Ben · Aug 24, 2010, 23:37:55

Meh. I did get a 1gb graphics card. In Windows 7, it adds this to your system memory when playing a game, so for me it is: 1gb for textures on the Gfx card, and 2gb for the rest of the game on system memory. In the older windows and Direct X, it use to copy the 1gb texture memory to system memory, which was a waste and took up twice the space. Most games are still coded in 32bit, so it can only address 3/4gb anyhow. So I decided to keep it at 2GB until more programs are made 64bit natively.

pctech · Aug 24, 2010, 23:40:06

Leaving a blank USB stick in is supposed to give quite a good performance increase on 64-bit versions of Windows (Vista and 7) as ReadyBoost can use the stick as additional RAM.

Niall · Aug 25, 2010, 13:50:27

I got one of those specially made for that by crucial. It was free or a couple of quid from scan when ordering it. I can't say I noticed any difference.

pctech · Aug 25, 2010, 18:03:02

I'm not running 7 yet but like all versions of NT based Windows iut reserves quite a bit of RAM as standby so it can load itself in along with an index.

ReadyBoost moves the index to the USB stick.

I'll give it a whirl when I get my new system.