Mesh Elite GTX 465 & GTX 480 systems review

1. Introduction2. The Elite Systems3. Inside Build4. Testing Methodology5. Cinebench R11.5 64bit6. SiSoft Sandra7. KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark8. PCMark Vantage9. Crysis Warhead10. Far Cry 211. Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC12. Thermal Dynamics and Noise13. Closing Thoughts14. View All Pages

MESH build machines for people that can’t abide screwdrivers. On that basis, most customers would never prize off the side. Not us. We LOVE getting our hands dirty.

Given that the MESH engineers know that the innards are unlikely to be inspected, how well have they done ?

Honestly?  Not bad at all.

After removing the side panel we see all the components we listed on the first page. the SSD is mounted just under the motherboard with the larger storage drive at the front of the chassis under the DVD drive.

Routing and cabling is all very tidy and we found the build to be well thought out with nothing blocking good front to back air flow.

According to the label, the Arctic Pro 950 is powerful enough to handle an upgrade to SLi later. It claims to offer up to 85% efficiency at 19dBA, which is as much as you can ask from a budget supply. We have never fully tested an Arctic Pro power supply , but the look/feel/weight and 140mm fan bode well. It really was quiet. For those with a hankering for brands, MESH offers upgrade options for Thermaltake PSUs like the award winning Toughpower Xt range.

The SSD drive supplied is a Samsung 64GB MLC model which comes preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium. This really helps the system to boot up quickly and we always like the SSD/Storage drive ‘meaty combo'. In our opinion, a lot of nonsense is spoken about the smaller SSDs. While 64GB is certainly not going to last forever if you’re downloading films etc, you can still get a fair amount of software into that space.

KitGuru is presently experimenting with a 64GB SSD on a new install as part of a separate project. So far, with little effort, we have Windows 7, a full copy of Office Professional, all of the standard browsers with a selection of  plug-ins, a couple of new games as well as Adobe’s CS5 Master Collection on the drive and we still have around 25GB spare.

Naturally, you can upgrade this drive as well, but MESH is aiming at a price point

At the top front of the chassis is the dual layer DVD burner which supports all formats. Cabling is very neat and is routed through the back of the case. A Blu-Ray reader is an optional upgrade, which you can have instead of the DVD for around £50.

Cooling is supplied by the Akasa Freedom Tower – which I feel is borderline adequate.

We understand that MESH’s standard warranty is 12 months and that customers can extend to 3 years. Knowing that, the PC isn't supplied overclocked. The Akasa cooler will handle the Core i5 750 at reference voltage with relative ease.

Akasa make some decent coolers, but they are not topping any performance charts for us anytime soon. Still, again, it’s a budget consideration. Reliability/price over clocks.

Not sure why MESH has supplied generic DDR3 1333Mhz memory. Maybe it is a price thing, but the increase for 1600Mhz modules can’t be that much, so we’d have liked to see an increase in quality here. We asked and you can get ‘named brand’ 1600MHz for a few bucks more. That’s what we would do, even if it was only to get life-extending heat spreaders.

We have no complaint about the Asus P7P55 motherboard. Even in its default-clocks state, this is a solid choice with plenty of flexibility. Asus seems to have extended its presence from the P5Q through to the P6T and now the P7P55 series as a ‘well engineered, competitively priced and very hard to beat’ choice.

The image above shows the GTX 480 hogging a sizeable portion of the chassis. We have looked at both the GTX 480 and GTX 465 before, however we will rerun some tests in this specific system to see how they perform.

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