The Tundra’s whiter-than-white chassis is certainly eye-catching, and its features and performance also stand up to closer inspection.

Chillblast manages to squeeze some extra performance out of the Tundra by substantially overclocking its relatively modest 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo processor so that it runs at a full 2.56GHz. Not surprisingly, then, the Tundra manages to outperform all its rivals in terms of raw processor power. It’s also got 2GB of Ram and a 320GB hard disk, so you’ve got plenty of scope for handling large multimedia files.

The overclocked processor requires two large internal fans to keep it cool, but these are fairly quiet and the Tundra doesn’t make very much noise when it’s running.

The only minor chink in its armour is the use of an Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS graphics card. This is a perfectly good card – certainly good enough for playing games and handling Vista graphics demands – but it doesn’t match the 3D performance of the Geforce 7950GT used by the Mesh and PC Nextday systems. The Tundra’s graphics card also has a very large heatsink that obstructs some of the other PCI slots inside the chassis, so the unit’s expansion options are a little more limited than they seem.

However, the Tundra picks up a few extra bonus points for being the only PC in this group to include a TV tuner card, so you can benefit from the excellent new Media Center features in Vista Home Premium. It also comes with a Vista upgrade Voucher, so you’re assured of a money-saving upgrade as well.

Hardcore gamers might prefer a system with the Nvidia Geforce 7950GT graphics card, but the Tundra’s strong performance and versatile multimedia features make it a very attractive PC for any home user.

This article is part of a group test of £999 PCs
See also:
Introduction
Ambros Shuttle SD32G2
Evesham Solar Creation
Mesh Elite E6600
PC Nextday Zoostorm 4-6403 Advanced PC
Graphs and table of features can be read via our Pdf downloads above.