When Intel launched its quad core processors they were aimed at the enthusiast, costing so much money that the rest of us mere mortals could only look on and sigh. But thanks to some frankly insane price-slashing by Intel, the most popular quad core CPU - the entry level Q6600 - is now 50 percent cheaper than a couple of months ago, so you will find it in systems costing less than £1,000. One such system is the Fusion Nemesis from Chillblast.

Chillblast being Chillblast, the company has tweaked the CPU to go faster than normal, running at 2.7GHz instead of the standard 2.4GHz but still using the standard cooler. And if you want to be even more adventurous, you could tweak it a tad more to get nearer the 3GHz mark.

The CPU sits in an Asus P5B-Plus motherboard based around Intel's P965 / ICH8R chipset combination. Both chipsets use passive cooling so even under load the Fusion Nemesis remains quiet, and with passive cooling there is no fear of the system developing that dreaded screaming noise you get when a chipset fan decides to spin itself into oblivion.

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Backing up the CPU and chipset is 2GB of DDR2 memory, but as you might expect from Chillblast, this isn't just any old memory but two sticks of Geil low latency PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory to keep everything nice and stable and quick. Did I say quick? That really doesn't do it justice, as a PCMark05 overall score of 8,990 proves. It also scores a mighty 5.9 with Vista's own benchmark utility.

For storage the Fusion Nemesis comes with a 500GB Western Digital drive, but if you should need more then there is enough space in the case for another three drives and, thanks to the RAID version of the ICH8 chipset on the motherboard, you could build them into a RAID array, either striped (RAID 0) for performance or mirrored (RAID 1) for data protection.

The case adds to the system's quietness as it features soundproof padding on the top and side panels as standard. Also supplied as standard in the case is one an 'environmentally friendly' EarthWatt power supply, in this case (no pun intended) a 500W unit. Housed in one of the three 5.25-inch drive bays is a Samsung 18x DVD burner that can also burn dual layer DVDs at 8x in both plus and minus formats, so backing up your data should be quick and hassle-free.

Supplying the graphics output is a 320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS, one of the best bang-for-the-buck cards around at the moment, giving a 3DMark05 score of 13,089 marks, an overall 3DMark06 score of 10,956 marks, and if that means nothing to you then how about an average frames per second score in F.E.A.R of 210fps.

Output from the card goes to the supplied 19-inch TFT screen which has a useful native resolution of 1,440 by 900 pixels. The audio capabilities are supplied by the motherboard, in this case an ADI1988A chip supporting 7.1-channel audio, although a 2.1-channel set of Logitech speakers was supplied with our review system. The motherboard provides the network connection (Gigabit Ethernet) while the system comes with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed.

A fast performing and quiet, all purpose PC, it'll play games with the best of them, while the quad core processor makes things like video editing much less time-consuming.