At first glance the Fusion 6000XT looks expensive, but a quick scan through some online component dealers reveals that you couldn’t do it much cheaper if you built it yourself.

At the heart of the PC is an Asus M2R32-MVP Socket AM2 motherboard, using AMD’s 580X/SB600 chipset combination. This setup supports all AMD’s AM2 processors – in this case an Athlon64 X2 6000+.

Backing the Asus up is 2GB of Corsair XMS2 800MHz DDR2 memory, which enabled the Fusion 6000XT to post a solid score of 110 in Sysmark 2007 Preview. The Vista Benchmark overall score sits at 5.4 – although not spectacular (mostly due to the CPU), it indicates this PC is more than adequate for most jobs.

One thing you can’t miss when you open the side panel of the case is the massive Zalman CNPS9700 Tritium Aero Cooler, keeping the 6000+ cool; to give you an idea how big, it uses a 110mm fan for cooling. Despite a further two fans, including a 120mm case fan, the Fusion 6000XT is remarkably quiet in use.

The Fusion 6000XT’s graphics performance really impressed us. The graphics are driven by a single AMD HD 2900XT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory sitting in one of the two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots; the motherboard supports Crossfire with both slots running at full speed. When benched at a 1,024x768 resolution the system gave a 3Dmark05 score of 16,701, while the more graphically intensive 3Dmark06 brought a score of 10,616. In our Fear test, it gave an average frame rate of 121fps (frames per second).

All this kit needs a good steady supply of power, and PC Specialist hasn’t skimped on the power supply – Enermax’s impressive 850W Galaxy PSU stares out at you when you open the Trigon case.

Some may find this choice of case annoying since it features a rather unnecessary swing door that covers the front bezel. The door itself is a hefty bit of kit with a pair of sturdy hinges, which is good news since you will have to keep opening it to access the power and reset buttons, multi-format card reader and optical drive. You could just leave it open, but then the backlit features on the door wouldn’t be visible.

Four USB ports are installed in the side of the front bezel, along with two audio ports. There is also space for a Firewire port, but PC Specialist has left this flashed over, relying instead on the Firewire port built in to the motherboard’s rear I/O panel and the one on the soundcard.

Also sitting on the I/O panel is an External Sata port so you can connect devices such as a hard drive to make high-speed data transfers – useful when performing substantial backups. Internal storage is provided by a single 500GB 7,200rpm Western Digital drive, and you also get a 20-speed dual-layer, dual-format DVD writer.

The rest of the internal hardware is made up of a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio soundcard, which supports 7.1 audio – although only a 2.1 speaker system was supplied with our review system – and a digital TV card for access to Freeview channels.

The package is rounded off by a 19in TFT with a 1,440x900 resolution, a Microsoft remote control and a Logitech Cordless Internet Pro keyboard and mouse.

If you want to alter any of the hardware, the whole system is fully customisable using the PC Specialist website. The standard one-year warranty is disappointing, but on the whole, this is a decent gaming PC.