Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 Gaming PC Review

Mesh is one of the oldest names in the UK PC manufacturing business. The company has been selling computers since 1987, and although the last five years have had their ups and downs they appear to be back with all guns blazing. The Elite Game Changer 980 sounds like a statement of intent as much as a model name. But can this computer really live up to its bullish branding? The Elite Game Changer 980 certainly brings together a choice selection of components. There's an Intel Core i7-4790K processor, 16GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics. There's a solid state disk and hard drive, plus a box of gaming goodies, too. But at just shy of £1,500, without a screen, this is a premium system by today's standards. So it really needs to provide the bangs for all those bucks. System Configuration: NZXT H440 Silent Case Black with Blue Trim w/Side Window. 4GHz Intel Core i7-4790K. MSI Z97A GAMING 6 Motherboard. Coolermaster Nepton 120 XL CPU Cooler. 4GB MSI NVIDIA GTX 980 Graphics Card. Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5 Motherboard. 16GB 2133MHz DDR3 Memory. 240GB OCZ DRIVE ARC 100 SSD. 1TB Toshiba DT01ACA100 7,200rpm HDD. SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 750W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply. ROCCAT ISKU FX Illuminated Keyboard. ROCCAT KOVA PLUS Max Performance Gaming Mouse. ROCCAT Kave XTD Premium Stereo Headset. Windows 8.1 64 bit. 2 Years Warranty - 1st Year Collect and Return, 2nd Year Parts only. Price for this system (at the time of writing): £1,499 (inc. VAT) Mesh ships the chassis and peripherals in two separate boxes. The chassis and keyboard box is double layered to avoid damage in transit. There's also some foam packing inside the chassis itself to stop components moving about, which you have to remember to take out before powering up the system. The secondary box contains the gaming goodies – mouse and headset – plus the motherboard extras, should you need them, and some documentation. There's a dainty little pouch with extra power connectors for the SuperFlower power supply, and a few more SATA cables. The mouse and headset are nicely colour coordinated with the chassis (of which more shortly). The ROCCAT keyboard, mouse and headset are generally popular among gamers, although the build quality of the mouse has been questioned after extended usage, and there is a lack of bass response from the headset. These are all premium peripherals worth in excess of £150 in total, so definitely a cut above a standard bundle. All you need to add to this system is a display and you will be ready to pose some serious “major league gaming” challenges to your friends and enemies alike. The Elite Game Changer 980's NZXT H440 is a midi tower chassis you can purchase in a variety of colours, but Mesh has opted for probably the most sober combination available – black with blue trim. It's not a bad-looking case, and the side window provides posing potential for all the powerful components within. Mesh has accentuated this with blue LED 12cm fans from Aerocool and a blue LED strip. However, although many of the components are held in place by thumbscrews, we found the ones securing the window panel in place very stiff, and the panel didn't slide off with the greatest of ease. Once off, it was extremely hard to put back on again, too. It's worth noting that there is no optical drive or memory card reader included. But when was the last time you used an optical drive anyway? There are two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, and minijacks for headphones and microphone on the top front edge. The Coolermaster Nepton 120 XL water cooling allows the interior to appear generally quite spacious. This is a decent water cooler, although not the topmost performer in its class. That said, the Nepton should keep the 88W thermal output of the Intel Core i7-4790K processor under control. The 4790K is the top of the quad-core Haswell generation, running at a nominal 4GHz. However, it has a 4.4GHz top Turbo mode, and Hyper-Threading allows it to operate as eight virtual cores. Mesh hasn't performed any permanent overclock, presumably because this processor runs pretty fast anyway, but there should be a little headroom available if you want to try your own hand. The Devil's Canyon processors like this have improved internal thermal grease to help this along. As this is a 4000-series Intel Haswell, only dual-channel DDR3 rather than quad-channel DDR4 memory is supported. Mesh has still supplied fast examples of the type, though, in the form of two 8GB 2,133MHz DIMMs, leaving a couple of slots free for future upgrade to the 32GB maximum afforded by the MSI Z97A GAMING 6 motherboard. The latter also sports a trio of PCI Express x16 slots for two-way SLI or up to three-way CrossFire configurations. There are four x1 PCI Express slots, should you find a reason to use one. The star of the show is the MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics card, which we were impressed by when it arrived in September 2014. This NVIDIA Maxwell-powered graphics card may have been surpassed by the Ti and Titan X of late, but it still packs a huge punch. It sports 2,048 CUDA cores and 16 Streaming Multiprocessors, which are running at 1190MHz in our MSI sample. It also incorporates 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7000MHz, providing 224GB/sec bandwidth. So it should be able to provide the highest quality and playable frame rates all the way up to 4K resolutions even with the most recent titles. But if you do need more, there's room in the chassis for another GTX 980. The cabling has been neatly routed under the motherboard, keeping the interior free for airflow. Apart from the aforementioned water cooling, which has dual fans, the Mesh chassis is equipped with no less than five 120mm Aerocool Shark fans, all blue LED lit. Two of these are on the top and three at the front. Mesh has placed another strip of blue LEDs at the bottom of the chassis, in case you didn't have enough blueness. The SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 750W power supply has a good reputation, and is fully modular, although the NZXT chassis hides it under a covering. This supply should be fine for another graphics card when required, and as mentioned earlier the necessary cables for the power supply have been supplied in the peripheral bundle. Mesh has tried to offer the best of both worlds with its storage, providing a fast solid state drive so the operating system and main apps load quickly, alongside a 7,200rpm conventional hard disk for your games and media collection. The SSD is a 240GB OCZ DRIVE ARC 100, which is about par for the course, since larger SSDs are still pretty expensive. However, the 1TB Toshiba DT01ACA100 hard disk is looking a little miserly these days, with 3TB drives costing less than £70 and Seagate offering 8TB for less than £200. There is also a PCI Express M.2 port, so faster SSD storage is possible, although Mesh hasn't taken advantage of this for the Elite Game Changer 980. There is plenty of room for upgrade, though, with 3.5in bays still free in the front (even if they are really hard to get to), plus two much more readily accessible 2.5in caddies above the PSU enclosure. On the rear there is a PS/2 mouse port still included, alongside the two USB 2.0 ports you're more likely to use for connecting the main input devices. The graphics ports beneath this are best ignored, as they would be for use with the integrated graphics of the Intel CPU. Beneath that is a single USB 3.1 Type C port, which looks like microHDMI but introduces a USB connection that is universal, rather than being the previous Type A at one end and Type B at the other. This connection runs at 10Gbits/sec, rather than the 4Gbits/sec of USB 3.0 (although the realistic maximum of the latter is more like 3.2Gbits/sec). There are a couple of regular USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports beneath this, plus Gigabit Ethernet from the Killer E2205 controller. Finally, there are the usual six minijacks for routing 7.1-channel audio from the Realtek ALC1150 motherboard sound chip. The Mesh system was running Windows 8.1. Here are the CPU-Z and GPU-Z readings showing the hardware configuration. We will be outlining the Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 against the Chillblast Fusion Barbarian, and our standard Z97 test system, although not for all the software used. Chillblast Fusion Barbarian Corsair SPEC-03 Case Intel Core i5 4690K overclocked to 4.2GHz H75 Water Cooler Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970 4GB Video Card Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5 Motherboard 16GB 1600 DDR3 Memory 120GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD 2000 GB 7200rpm HDD Corsair CX 750W PSU 24 x DVD RW Windows 8.1 64 bit Z97 Comparison Test System Processor: Intel Core i7 4790K ES (4.4GHz forced turbo). Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Impact. Memory: 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz CL10. Graphics Card: Asus R9 280X Matrix Platinum 3GB. System Drive: 240GB SanDisk Extreme II SSD. CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i. Case: NZXT Phantom 630. Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W. Operating System: Windows 7 Professional with SP1 64-bit. Tests: 3DMark 1.5.915 – Fire Strike 1.1 SiSoft Sandra 2014 SP2 – Processor arithmetic, memory bandwidth Cinebench R15 – All-core CPU and OpenGL graphics benchmark Crystal DiskMark 3.0.4 – SATA 6Gbps transfer rates Tomb Raider – 1920 x 1080, ultimate quality GTA V – 1920 x 1200, high quality 3DMark We used 3DMark's 'Fire Strike' benchmark, which is designed to be used on gaming PCs. We opted for the Normal setting, NOT the Extreme mode. This is a phenomenal result for the 3DMark FireStrike 1.1 test. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 certainly shows its abilities against the GTX 970 in the Chillblast Fusion Barbarian, and the AMD Radeon R9 280X in our reference system. This bodes well for its gaming abilities. Sandra Processor Arithmetic Sandra Memory Bandwidth The Intel Core i7-4790K's native 4GHz and 4.4GHz Turbo Boost gives it a distinct advantage over both the Chillblast Fusion Barbarian and our reference system when crunching numbers. This CPU clearly has a lot of native grunt available. However, our reference system's 2,400MHz memory beats the 2,133MHz memory in the Mesh Elite Game Changer 980, although the latter still beats the 1,600MHz DDR3 in the Chillblast. Overall, the memory scores are precisely as we would expect. We used the 'CPU' test built into Cinebench R15. Unsurprisingly, the Mesh system achieved almost the same result as our reference system. Since they have the same processor, and this test primarily tests CPU performance with very little effect from memory or any other components, the result should be the same. It's a commendable score for a quad-core processor, again showing the abilities of the Intel Core i7-4790K. Tomb Raider We used a 1920 x 1080 resolution and the Tomb Raider built-in benchmark set to 'Ultimate' quality. The GTX 980 gives the Game Changer a distinct advantage over our Z97 reference system, but the benefit compared to the GTX 970-sporting Chillblast Fusion Barbarian isn't so huge. Nevertheless, Tomb Raider will be eminently playable at the maximum quality, boding well for many other titles. Grand Theft Auto V We used a 1920 x 1200 resolution and the GTA V built-in benchmark set to maximum quality settings to offer an intense challenge for the gaming hardware while also making playable frame rates a possibility. We used FRAPS to record the frame rates of the last portion of the benchmark, where a jet flies across the city followed by a truck ploughing into a petrol tanker. We don't have any systems to compare this to, but it's clear that this very grueling game is eminently playable at the maximum settings in HD. The handy GTA V memory allocation bar shows there's plenty of headroom left from the 4GB available on the GTX 980 graphics, whereas a 3GB card would be struggling at these settings. SSD Performance The OCZ SSD used by Mesh is not particularly fast. The sequential read and write are around 20 per cent slower than the best SATA examples, as are most of the other tests, and less than half what a PCI Express m.2 SSD might manage. This isn't a particular problem for a gaming system, but there are much faster SSDs Mesh could have chosen. HDD Performance The Toshiba hard drive, in contrast, is reasonably quick for a 7,200rpm model. The sequential reads are about half that of the SSD, so this should be a decent drive for loading hefty games or enjoying various forms of multimedia. Idle temperature and acoustic recordings are taken while the system sits at the desktop under minimum load. Then we run 3DMark's FireStrike 1.1 and take the measurements again once the temperature or sound has settled to its maximum. All fans were left to the Mesh-supplied defaults. We recorded audio from a 1m distance from the base unit at approximately the same level. Thermal Performance It was quite a warm summer's day during testing, but even taking this into consideration the idle temperatures were a little high. Nothing to worry about, though, as the maximum temperatures under load were perfectly acceptable. There shouldn't be any problems during a heavy, lengthy gaming session. Acoustic Performance The system noise doesn't change much at all under load. However, it's also rather loud, considering that most systems will produce 30-40dB these days, even under load in some cases. You could easily reduce this by putting some of the many fans onto lower settings, as there really are a lot of them and you clearly don't need this amount of cooling when the system is idling. The Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 is a capable gaming system. The combination of the Intel Core i7-4790K and MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 is potent for even the most demanding recent titles, as our GTA V test in particular shows. It's not perfect in every respect. All the fans make it a slightly noisy beast, and the SSD isn't the quickest available. But there's performance where it's needed most, and the system is both aesthetically pleasing and well constructed, apart from the stiff side panel which will make upgrading more painful than it should be. Fortunately, apart from the SSD, the component choice is exemplary, and should make this system a capable gaming platform for some years to come. The 16GB of memory won't need updating for a while, and unless you feel the need for the absolute top end of graphics performance, the GTX 980 should be capable with new titles over most of that time too - whilst, of course, it's also about the easiest component to upgrade. It is slightly irritating that the PSU is hidden inside a cover, should your upgrades require extra power, although this does ensure that the interior remains neat and looks good through the side window. The modular PSU design and supplied extra cabling supplied mean that you will be able to use this when the time does come. At £1,499 inc VAT, the Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 isn't exactly cheap. For example, the Chillblast Fusion Barbarian system we used as comparison is £400 less. However, the latter is also noticeably slower, and we also appreciated the colour-coordinated bundle of premium peripherals included with the Game Changer. The two year warranty on parts, with collect and return thrown in for the first year as well, is decent if not outstanding. Overall, the Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 is about the right price for what you get, making it a good choice if you're after a fast and reasonably stylish gaming system from one of the oldest UK brands in PC system building. Pros: Intel Core i7 4790K and MSI GeForce GTX 980 make great combination for gaming. Future-proofed 16GB of memory. Premium bundle including gaming keyboard, mouse and headset. Colour-coordinated peripherals with chassis. Attractive chassis. Neat interior build. Cons: Side panel hard to remove and replace. Relatively slow SSD. A 2TB+ secondary hard disk would have been preferable in a system this price. KitGuru says: The Mesh Elite Game Changer 980 is very competent at its main task of gaming, whilst the design and peripheral bundle are very well focused on this area as well. It's not a cheap PC, but you do get what you paid for.