Eclipse Stealth FX812R795 Extreme review

All the system’s components, including the 1000W PSU, are high-quality branded hardware from manufacturers such as Corsair and XFS. The motherboard is Asus’s Sabertooth 990FX, which has four PCI-E x16 slots, a PCI slot and a PCI-E x1 slot. However, all the expansion card slots are blocked by the pair of graphics cards – if you want to add a sound card, for instance, you’ll have to stick with USB. All four memory card slots are also occupied – the PC has a total of 16GB of memory. Only three of the motherboard’s eight SATA ports – two SATA2 and six SATA3 – are in use, though, and there are plenty of vacant bays in the massive case.

The three occupied bays are taken up by a 120GB SSD for the Windows system disk, 1TB hard disk for data and a Blu-ray re-writer. The top of the case has an additional SATA bay, making it easy to hot-plug hard disks to get at their data. Next to this are USB2, USB3 and eSATA ports. At the back of the case are another dozen USB ports, two of them USB3, as well as eSATA, Firewire and a PS/2 port. There’s also an optical S/PDIF output and 7.1 analogue surround sound outputs.

The PC’s Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog flight kit is an enormous metal throttle and flight stick set, accurately modelled on controls used by the US Air Force. They lack the paddles required to make the most of some commercial aircraft sims and their driver is a touch fiddly to configure, but these heavy-duty controls make you feel like you’re really busting tanks. The Cyborg R.A.T.3 and V.5 keyboard are a decent gaming set, although we found the mouse a little small and the keys a tad spongy.

If you’re after the ultimate multi-screen, 3D flight sim rig, this is probably it. Its few flaws are minor, it’s massively powerful and it’s been built with a great amount of care. For those chosen few who have both the money and the will to spend over £3000 on a gaming system, this is a brilliant option. If you don’t fancy triple-monitor gaming and aren’t into flight sims, you can buy the hugely-powerful base unit for £2,000 inc VAT.