Evesham is certainly making a strong statement of intent with its Cosmos Pro, an expensive computer that promises fast performance.

Housed in one of Coolermaster’s massive Cosmos 1000 full tower cases, it’s no shrinking violet; you might find it difficult to hide this one away, but then again if you’re willing to shell out £3,000 why should you want to hide it?

Opening the case reveals a well-built system with all the power and data cables neatly clipped out of the way or hidden, a task that is aided by the huge space and internal design of the Cosmos case.

Evesham has used some top-notch components for the Cosmos Pro. Powering the system is one of Intel’s fastest current CPUs, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850. The QX6850 is a quad-core processor running at 3GHz with a 1,333MHz front-side bus (FSB) and 8MB of L2 cache shared between the cores. Backing up the CPU is 4GB of fast Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 DDR2 memory clocked at 800MHz.

So with this much grunt you should expect the Cosmos Pro to fly, and it certainly didn’t disappoint in our tests. Its overall scores in PCmark05 of 10,091 and 5,043 in the latest PCmark Vantage test makes it one of the fastest systems we have tested to date.

The CPU and memory are fitted into a good choice of motherboard, namely EVGA’s Nforce 680i SLI. This offers plenty of performance as standard, but if you’re happy to void your warranty it also has a bewildering number of overclocking options in the Bios. Unlike many others, this Bios is also extremely easy to use.

As you would expect of a system aimed at gamers, the graphics performance of the Cosmos Pro is first rate. Powered by two Leadtek PX8800U-TDH768 Ultras configured to run in SLI mode, it produced a 3Dmark05 score of 17,740 and 15,442 in 3Dmark06. It also scored well in our real-world tests, with an average of 154fps (frames per second) in Fear.

The included monitor and speakers add to the gaming experience offered by the Cosmos Pro. The monitor of choice is a Samsung Syncmaster SM245B; a 24in widescreen TFT with a native resolution of 1,920x1,200 and 5ms response time. The audio is delivered by a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme gamer card, which is a good match for the Creative Inspire T7900, a 7.1 surround-sound speaker system.

It shows just how far we have come with storage capacities these days that the supplied single 500GB hard drive seems somehow to be a bit mean. Even so, the 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive with 16MB of cache offers fast transfer rates for even the biggest files. This drive must feel a bit lonely in this case, as the Cosmos offers room for another five 3.5in drives. You also get three spare 5.25in drive bays; the other two are filled with two Samsung serial ATA DVD writers.

Thanks to another Coolermaster product, the RS-A00-EMEA, the components have a 1,000W power supply to draw on, which gives you a degree of future proofing should you want to add or upgrade some of the Cosmos Pro’s components at a later date. The hardware package is rounded out by a Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 keyboard and mouse.

The preinstalled OS is Windows Vista Ultimate, while the software is a relatively light affair with just Microsoft Works 8.5, Bullguard Security Suite and Roxio Media Suite 9XE. Evesham supplies a one-year Silver warranty with the Cosmos Pro, which provides on-site parts and labour cover.