Here is a health warning - under no circumstances should you attempt to remove Evesham's Cosmos Gaming PC from its packaging without the assistance of at least two sturdy friends. Fortunately the space-age, ultra-sexy, silver, Cooler Master casing comes with built-in ‘crash-barrier' type handles which will make transporting this monster a darn sight easier.

And monster is the truth of it. You can tell from the dimensions (266 x 598 x 628mm) that this steel-caged animal is ready for some serious gameplay and much of the unit's performance is due to the design of the casing and the cooling system. It uses dual bottom air intakes to draw cool air in and reduce system noise, as well as three 120mm exhaust fans on the top and rear. In addition, you have six detachable aluminium HDD modules, a side-removable VGA cooling tunnel for thermal airflow and a bundle of soundproofing materials.

There's a front panel which houses twin, multi-format, Dual Layer, 20x DVD writers and the primary instrument panel is on the top, where you have four USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 FireWire port, audio and speaker jacks, an eSATA connector and the power button. Although the Cosmos can be built to order, the Website offers two contrasting models, depending on your budget.

Even the ‘basic' Cosmos still uses Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate as the OS of choice with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 processor (3GHz, 1,333MHz, 4MB cache), two 1GB Corsair DDR2 RAM modules and a full 500GB Serial ATA II, 7,200rpm hard drive. When it comes to graphics, you'd naturally expect something special and that comes in the shape of a 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra card.

But it's not just the tower on offer here. As part of the package you're supplied with a set of Creative T7900 7.1 surround sound speakers, the Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 v2 keyboard and mouse set and an awesome 24-inch widescreen TFT display.

On the other hand, if only the best will do then the Cosmos Elite makes a leap in CPU terms to the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core QX6850 processor (3GHz, 1,333MHz, 8MB cache) with double the amount of RAM and a whopping 1TB (i.e. two 500GB) Serial ATA II, 7,200rpm hard drives for storage. Naturally the graphics cards are also doubled up and the sound is boosted via the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card.

Once everything was installed we were ready for the proof, using what is in our opinion the best graphics game currently on the market, EA's alien invasion first-person shooter, Crysis.

Within seconds we felt like we were in the heart of a Hollywood blockbuster, with foliage so real you could smell it, and surrounded by jungle effects and the sound of vehicles crunching up a dirt road. Next it was on to F.E.A.R. and soon we were cowering under the desk at the supernatural entities springing up in front and apparently from behind us too. Now we know what addiction feels like.

If you have the strength and the financial means to haul this untamed beast into your study, then now would be a good time to upgrade to a machine that really does take gamers' needs seriously.