Product Specifications
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| This product was added to our catalog on Friday 10 April, 2009 |
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Dell 1525 (2GB)
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Intel® CoreTM2 Quad processor Q6600
Intel® CoreTM2 Quad processor Q6600
(8 MB L2 Cache, 2.4 GHz, 1066 MHz)
DG33FBC Motherboard
1 GB RAM , 160 GB Sata
17" Black Monitor ,
ATX Board,
Optical Mouse Multimedia Keyboard,
DVD Writer.
Price 23,500/-
Intel® Core™2 Duo processor E4500
Intel® Core™2 Duo processor E4500
(2 MB L2 Cache, 2.2 GHz, 800 MHz)
D946 GCIS Mother Board
512 DDR2 RAM , 160 GB Sata
17" Black Monitor , ATX Board,
Optical Mouse Multimedia Keyboard,
DVD Writer.
Win exciting prizes upon purchase of the above system. For more details contact Mr. Mustafa.
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Acer Travelmate 6293-6889
Acer's TravelMate 6293 all-purpose laptop will thrill corporate bean counters with its long battery life.
Not all slim and light laptops come off the conveyor belt bursting with sex appeal. Take the Acer TravelMate 6293: Battery life, it has in spades. Everything else? Not so much. This entirely black portable is fairly well packaged as far as all-purpose laptops go, but if this machine were to go on a diet and lose 0.6 pounds, it could qualify as a good deal for an ultraportable. No doubt Acer's goal was to cut corners--and some standard notebook connections--to a hit a palatable $999 price point, perfectly acceptable for a business budget. But the result is a laptop that's a tad frumpy.
Don't get me wrong--performance-wise, the TravelMate 6293 rocks. Its battery life is Energizer Bunny amazing. Equipped with a powerful 7200-mAh battery, the laptop lasted 3 minutes shy of 8 hours in our tests. Just stick this baby in a backpack or briefcase and walk out the door declaring Outlet Freedom Day. The results are far better than what we've seen from any other all-purpose portable on the scene. Heck, because of its diminutive size, we were this close to comparing it with a Lenovo ThinkPad X200.
The speed of the TravelMate 6293 is good, too, though not quite as breathtaking. The 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo P8400-equipped unit with 2GB of RAM turned in a pretty impressive WorldBench 6 score of 90, so it should be able to handle any type of work swiftly, limited only by the shared video memory. Lack of a dedicated graphics card is an unfortunate characteristic of small laptops that effectively eliminates gaming; the memory is just too sparse to support 3D shooters with fancy shading.
Of course, small screens don't lend themselves to entertainment, either, but the 12.1-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel, wide-aspect display is fine for any other job you care to squeeze into those small quarters. It's crisp, reasonably bright, and glossy, but it won't hurt your eyes under office lights.
Topping the TravelMate 6293's keyboard are seven helpful quick-launch buttons. All are preprogrammed for such activities as setting the system password, launching the onboard backup utility, and starting your e-mail program and Web browser. A nice touch is that one button triggers the Launch Manager itself, which saved me worlds of time poking around various utilities and system-tray icons attempting to find the program that would let me reset the buttons to start my own favorite apps. Overall the keyboard is well laid out and easy to type on. The touchpad is small but zippy and easy to use. Only the mouse buttons--particularly short to make room for the fingerprint reader between them, and extremely stiff--are a distraction.
At 4.6 pounds--not including the power brick, which makes the total weight 5.4 pounds--the TravelMate 6293 is a tad heavy for an ultraportable but fairly light for an all-purpose machine. (The extra beef pushes it into the all-purpose category, since it weighs over 4 pounds.) Obviously designed for corporate jetsetters restricted by a budget, it also lacks a FireWire port (which would have been handy for fast digital downloads) and sports the older PC Card slot instead of an ExpressCard slot.
In the plus column, the laptop does have a nice, big, 250GB hard drive, plus conveniences such as dedicated Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi switches and a built-in Webcam. The storage and memory are fully user-upgradeable--great news for rapid IT deployment.
The TravelMate 6293 also includes other features important to bottom-line-conscious corporate buyers, such as a gigabit ethernet connection and a standard DVD recorder (rather than a pricey high-definition optical drive).
If you take a look at the all-purpose category, you'll see that not many machines go for under $1000--and those that do, such as the Toshiba Satellite U405-S2854 or the Sony VGN-NR485, are much bulkier by comparison. The TravelMate 6293 might not have all the cutting-edge features, but no laptop we've tested recently makes better use of a battery for carefree wireless computing. If work keeps you out of the office most of the day, put this $999 plain Jane at the top of your list Read More......Lenovo Ideapad Y530
The sweet-sounding Y530 all-purpose laptop is good for work and play.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 isn't exactly made for kids, but it sure can kick out the tunes. You can tell it was designed to be a sleek all-purpose laptop that knows how to get down to business and play around a little without costing a fortune (our review unit was $829 as of 2/26/09). Though the Y530 can't run modern games at a screaming pace, it still packs a decent amount of power for its sub-$1000 price tag.
Along with an Intel P7350 2GHz processor, it has 2GB of DDR3-1066MHz RAM. And though it doesn't carry a market-leading discrete graphics card, it does have an nVidia 9300M GS, which should help when the machine is running graphics-intensive programs such as Adobe Photoshop. In our WorldBench 6 tests it earned a score of 82, a little on the low side for laptops in its class, but the result makes sense considering it's one of the few laptops priced below a grand. Just don't try to use it for anything more than playing older or casual games (or playing newer games with very tempered expectations). When we put it through our gaming tests, it performed well enough with older titles such as Far Cry and Doom 3, but had a hard time breaking the coveted 30-frames-per-second barrier for newer games like Unreal Tournament 3 and Quake Wars. Then again, the $999 Gateway MC7803u didn't fare much better.
At least it doesn't kill batteries in a hurry. Our review rig ran for just over 3 hours in tests.
The Y530's 15-inch screen provides solid 1280 by 800 resolution--when you can see the panel, that is. The glare is a pretty significant problem. Even in a room with the blinds closed and only indirect light sources, I could see my reflection staring back at me as I tried to work. Moreover, the colors are muted, with everything looking more opaque than it should. Not that big of a deal when you're listening to tunes, but the color issues and the glare combined can be a big downer when you're trying to get into a movie playing on the laptop's DVD-ROM drive.
Thankfully, the keyboard on the Y530 works splendidly. It has ample room, as well as an array of function buttons (including a ten-key) that make adjusting your brightness and other settings a simple task. And if you love music, you're in for a real treat, as the Y530 features a touch-inductive panel that allows you to control media and even tweak equalizer settings easily. (I'll delve deeper into this audiophile's dream in a second.) The touchpad is standard, and it lacks the scroll bar that numerous other laptops include. It performs just fine, however, and it's positioned far enough from the keyboard that it never gets in the way when you're working hard and your fingers are flying.
Unlike a lot of other laptops these days, the Y530 doesn't go for a glossy exterior. Instead, the machine's visual appeal banks on the notion that matte black can look dead sexy--and it does. The lightly textured exterior feels like that of a lovely old book, and that idea translates to more than just aesthetics. The machine closes tight without the use of locks to hold it in place, and it snaps closed with a satisfying sound that is reminiscent of the closing of a heavy hardcover novel.
The inside of the Y530 is made of a beautiful nonshiny metallic surface that blends perfectly with the exterior of the machine and contrasts nicely with the dark black keyboard and the backlit touch-inductive surface that sits above it. Along with the standard audio, ethernet, and three USB ports, you get a lot of other connections that give the Y530 many more potential uses, including an HDMI audio port, a VGA port, a PCI Express card slot, a multiformat media reader, and a FireWire (IEEE 1394) connector that will allow you to hook up special cameras and external drives. That's a lot of interface options, and they're especially useful since Lenovo managed to fit them all along the sides and on the front of the machine only. And expansion doesn't look like it'll be too hard of a task for the enthusiast tech-head: The battery is easy to take out, while the RAM and the 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive are easily accessible after you remove just a few screws.
Audio is where this IdeaPad excels. The Y530 features four speakers and a tiny little subwoofer built into the bottom. The result, on music at least, is surprisingly crisp quadraphonic sound. At full volume this laptop gets much louder than others do, but a lot of background noise can still drown it out fairly easily. The system doesn't do nearly as well on movies: In our tests, DVDs that we played in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center (the only DVD-playback software included) were annoyingly quiet. Still, if the ability to listen to music while working is what you're after, the Y530 would be an excellent laptop choice.
The documentation included with the Y530 is pretty extensive, and it makes the laptop extremely user friendly. From a pullout poster that breaks down all the small things that you'll need to know as a first-time user, to a user guide that explains all the nitty-gritty details about the rig, you'll have more than enough information to get acquainted with your new work partner. The software bundle, on the other hand, is abysmal: This laptop comes with almost nothing besides Windows and CyberLink software for burning CDs and DVDs. Would it have been too much to toss in some awesome DVD-playback software to support the wonderful speakers?
With the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530, "You get what you pay for" isn't a bad thing. The Y530 is a good laptop built for anyone who needs to work and to sneak in a little play time on the side. And, for under a thousand bucks, it is a solid counterpoint to Gateway's MC7803u series.
Samsung N110
Samsung's fast follow-up to the NC10 fixes a couple small issues to create a better netbook--and it manages to eke even more battery life out of the same tiny frame.
I'm going to lay this out to you straight: The Samsung N110 is, at its core, a slightly revamped take on the company's NC10. A bit of streamlining (better plastics and a slimmer profile) here and a couple tweaks (immense improvement on the mouse button) there...it all adds up to polishing away blemishes found on the original version. So if you find some echoes between the two reviews, they're entirely intentional.
Samsung has made an interesting decision to switch from the matte screen on the NC10 to the glossy side of the force. It doesn't matter all that much: The 10.1-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel panel works reasonably in all sorts of lighting conditions. What's notable is that, in a side-by-side comparison, the glossy finish didn't really make the screen on the N110 pop that much more--but it did introduce a bit of glare. I'd almost prefer sticking with the matte screen of the NC10.
Thank goodness Samsung has addressed the troublesome touchpad buttons of its older netbook. On that machine you have to push the button down below the surface in order for the action to register. As a result, if you press the left side of the single-button bar, the right side of the bar juts up. On the N110, the company has fixed the problem quickly and easily by changing the molding on the casing. Even though the dimensions haven't changed from those of the NC10 (10.3 by 7.3 by 1.5 inches), the N110 feels a little more slender. And since Samsung built this mouse button into the curved bottom, it hits the hands more naturally. Generally it seems more secure.
What hasn't changed a whole lot is the keyboard. The buttons satisfy, and the firm, solid keys give a little as you press down. The feel is reminiscent of what you find on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10. Lacking any extra shortcut buttons (like the S10), the N110 comes across as a semi-stylish but bland netbook on the surface. Of course, it all comes down to personal taste. For instance, I think the HP Mini 1000 makes better use of that same amount of space with its wide, flat keyboard.
Otherwise, you're getting the standard-issue layout for a netbook: an SD card reader, three USB 2.0 ports, VGA, ethernet, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, headphone and microphone jacks, and a Webcam. And don't forget the tinny speakers--the curse of most netbooks.
If you're familiar with netbooks at all, you know not to expect them to be speed demons. No exception here: The 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU and 1GB of RAM in the N110 motored through our WorldBench 6 tests with the same verve we saw from the initial pack of netbooks using the same processor. It scored a hair higher than Samsung's previous model, earning a middle-of-the-road mark of 36. Also unremarkable is the fact that the machine comes with a 160GB hard drive. Where it does shine, though, is in the battery-life department: The N110 ran for a staggering 8 hours, 23 minutes. That's long by any stretch--and by netbook standards, it outdoes the competition without having to use an overly meaty battery. The system weighs only 2.7 pounds.
The feature attractions, in my humble opinion, lie in the bundled software package. Samsung Recovery Solution III is a handy backup and system-restore program that even throws in a couple of suggestions regarding the possible causes of your machine's problems, giving you a recommended course of backup action to resolve the matter. Easy Network Manager lets you quickly and effortlessly connect to networks; it's a superfluous bit of software for anyone remotely savvy enough, but it puts a pretty face on the standard Windows XP option. I even like the well-annotated and easily navigable digital user guide. I'm not kidding--I wish every netbook came this well prepared for battle.
Offering an improved mouse button and impressive battery life, the Samsung N110 would make a great choice for your next road trip. At $470, it isn't by any means the cheapest netbook on the block, but it certainly is a handsome, functional one. While I salute Samsung for correcting design flaws present in the NC10, I'd have preferred to see this the first time around.
Lenovo Ideapad S10
A few nips here, a few tucks there; Lenovo gives its l'il laptop a few upgrades--and drops the price to boot. Not a bad netbook deal.
It might not look like a major development, Lenovo announcing an incremental update to the IdeaPad S10, dubbed the IdeaPad S10 (High Capacity). However, it sends a message: Namely, that Lenovo takes netbooks seriously--and believes that it delivered a truly awesome model the first time around (it did). That doesn't mean the original S10 was perfect. The S10 (High Capacity) brings a slight refresh with a few bits and bobs that make it an even better deal than before.
Performance-wise, I didn't expect to see a difference. After all, it's running with the same N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard disk sitting under the hood. It's also got the same 10.2-inch screen and the same 1024-by-600-pixel resolution. What I can't suss out is why this machine scored a 37 in WorldBench 6 while the original notched a 41. On the bright side, it does have gumption. The 6-cell battery in our review unit powered the device for a little over 5 hours.
It's a hair thinner (it now measures 9.8 by 7.7 by 1.4 inches) and more than a pound lighter (at 2.4 pounds, down from 3.6 pounds), and it has a couple of nips and tucks that I noticed straightaway. The two-tone colors pop like a good sports coupe while the unit retains its solidly-built netbook frame. And the keys are a bit bigger, though the machine weighs less (thanks to the big "L" for making the left-shift key a little longer). While the keyboard is very comfortable to tap on, how about flipping the function and control keys? It's a major pain to keep hitting the wrong one.
Something that really should have been changed, but wasn't, is the touchpad. The designers go to all this trouble to expand the keyboard, but my fingers are almost rebelling against me for even thinking about trying to use that touchpad. It's about as small as the the original Asus Eee PC's. Oompah Loompahs say, "That's tiny!" So if you happen to have big sausage-y adult-man hands (like me), you're potentially in for a world of hurt.
But it's not all doom-and-gloom. (Especially if you have dainty digits.) The updated S10 also has a fairly robust, praiseworthy software package. VeriFace Recognition III security software carries over from previous IdeaPads and ThinkPads, so bully to Lenovo for including it here. And the OneKey Rescue software that I saluted in the original S10 is back. It's pretty handy--if pretty basic. You can create full or partial backups inside of a couple clicks (after tapping the shortcut button above the keyboard).
Lenovo Idea Central is a news reader and glorified series of rotating ads in a customer-friendly interface. You might find some use in it--I didn't. What I did find fairly useful: The QuickStart application. Don't want to boot into Windows? You get rapid access to a handful of applications such as Skype, Web browsing, a photo manager, and a media player.
Not half bad considering that these updated machines start at $349 (our test unit, complete with a six-cell battery, sells for $409 as of May 11, 2009) Read More......Asus EEE PC 1000HE
A smart netbook that not only gets the design right -- and it's priced to move.
Updated 3/6/2009 The final retail unit does not have a shared USB-eSATA port as originally reported.
The streamlined and redesigned Asus Eee PC 1000HE takes no prisoners. While the previous Asus Eee PC 1000 offered a solid netbook, Acer's Aspire One stole all the attention with its lean and incredibly affordable approach. With the latest incarnation of the Eee PC 1000, the "HE" might as well stand for "Holy Enhancement!" This model bears only a passing resemblance to last year's Eee PC, and improves upon just about everything from the keyboard to the CPU. Better yet, in addition to losing some unsightly girth, Asus also trimmed the price to $400.
Let's take a quick tour around the machine to kick this off. The first, most obvious thing you'll spot is the cut-out keyboard. Just like you'd find on an Apple MacBook Air or on Sony VAIO laptops, the keys poke through the plastic, creating a wide gap between buttons. In that respect, this feels and looks great, and is generally more usable. The trackpad is just spacious enough -- I particularly like its metal framing and the few multitouch functions incorporated into the design. However, I found the pad slightly twitchy to control. No deal-breaker, but I noticed.
You also get a couple handy shortcut buttons hovering along the top of the unit. They do everything from give the CPU a speed boost (more on that below) and user-definable shortcuts to a screen resolution adapter. That is, you can view 1024-by-768 resolutions even though the native resolution of the 1000HE is 1024 by 600 -- it's a special compression mode that Lenovo employs in the IdeaPad S10 as well, and represents a convenience given that some applications default to a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution and won't work otherwise.
This unit's 10.1-inch backlit LED display is bright and capable of good color reproduction; its glossy coating helps the image pop a little more than you usually see on netbooks. However, the highly polished bezel that keeps the screen in place can get a little distracting at times.
A number of aerodynamic nips and tucks make this 10.3-by-7.4-by-1.4-inch netbook just a hair thinner than the older, clunkier Eee PC 1000 we reviewed last year. It's also a little on the "heavy" side for a netbook, weighing 3.2 pounds. That's the price of strapping an 8700mAH battery to the bottom of this thing; Asus promises that the 1000HE will deliver 9.5 hours of performance (but we got a solid seven hours, nine minutes in our tests).In short, netbooks in this generation are finally packing the battery power required for marathon computing sessions.
Speaking of performance, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE sports Intel's 1.66-GHz Atom N280 CPU. For the sake of comparison, most of the netbooks that came out late last year used the N270 CPU, which runs at a lower frequency (1.6-GHz) and a slower frontside bus speed (533MHz as compared with 667 MHz in the N280). The difference, however, was minimal. Our test unit got a 35 in WorldBench: an average score for what you'll find in netbooks.
The Asus comes with 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard disk drive, and 802.11b/g/n /Bluetooth wireless. Around the perimeter of chassis lies a fairly standard set of three USB 2.0 inputs.
The audio, as on the Eee PC 1000, sounds surprisingly strong for its size. But it lacks a good subwoofer, so don't expect to rock a house party with this thing. Other notable features thrown into the mix: InterVideo WinDVD (which seems to be a little bit of overkill, I'd recommend you try out KMPlayer), and 18 months of 10GB of free online storage.
In the end, this is a fairly solid -- and sizable -- jump over what's come out just a few months earlier. In fact, I'd dare say that amongst the netbook pack, this is one of my current favorites and something that I'd highly recommend that you check out. Considering that its selling in some places for as little as $380, you could do worse.
Read More......CyberPower Power Infinity Pro
This Penryn-based PC packs a big punch in gaming performance, but it'll also wallop your wallet.
CyberPower's Power Infinity Pro is one of the first systems to ship with Intel's newest quad-core CPU, a 3-GHz QX9650 Core 2 Extreme chip--the company's first to be built on a 45nm manufacturing process--that's aimed squarely at enthusiasts and other early adopters. (Mainstream users will have to wait until next year for more-affordable 45nm dual-core offerings.) We were able to test the system before the QX9650 hits the streets, and found its test results to be a mixed bag. Though the Power Infinity Pro strutted its stuff in our gaming and graphics tests, in most general applications it showed only modest performance gains over systems using older quad-core chips.
Our review unit shipped with 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate. In our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 test suite, it earned a strong mark of 120. That score fell a bit short, however, of the 124 mark of a CyberPower Infinity Pro that we tested a couple of months ago, which uses the previous-generation, 3-GHz QX6850 Core 2 Extreme CPU. This result echoes the benchmarks that PC World obtained in similar tests comparing the QX9650 with the QX6850 chip that it is supplanting.
In the Photoshop, 3DS Max rendering, and multitasking components of our WorldBench series, the Power Infinity Pro earned the best scores among all power PCs we've recently tested, though its marks were only a few seconds faster than the results of the next-closest models. In some WorldBench application tests (3DS Max DirectX, Windows Media Encoder, and VideoWave), the Power Infinity Pro's scores merely tied those of other systems (the Xi Mtower PCIe and the HP Blackbird 002) that used older CPUs. Most perplexing was the Power Infinity Pro's sluggish performance in the Nero portion of our WorldBench suite, for which its score of 592 seconds was the slowest of the lot. While none of our WorldBench scores reflect the performance gains that Intel predicts for the QX9650 CPU in imaging, 3D rendering, and video encoding, it should be noted that none of the applications in our test suite are optimized to take advantage of the QX9650's new SSE4 instructions, which can greatly speed up tasks such as video encoding (in applications that use SSE4).
On the plus side, the newer Power Infinity Pro posted the fastest scores ever in all of our gaming graphics tests, beating older quad-core models that use the same EVGA 8800 GTX graphics board. The Power Infinity Pro achieved an impressive average of 193 frames per second (fps) while running Doom 3 and 223 fps running Far Cry, both at 1280 by 1024 resolution with antialiasing turned on, well ahead (by about 13 percent) of the second-fastest system, the nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra-equipped HP Blackbird 002 LCi, which posted results of 170 fps and 198 fps, respectively. That's not the 40 percent that Intel claims for gaming, but it's still pretty darn impressive. Though the Power Infinity Pro came with a single graphics board that performed well in our graphics tests, the system's Asus P5K3 Deluxe motherboard is capable of hosting two graphics cards in a CrossFire setup. (Taking advantage of the feature would preclude using an SLI-compatible card such as the EVGA 8800 GTX card in our test system.)
Without a doubt, one of the Power Infinity Pro's best features is its stylish Cooler Master Cosmos case, which sports sturdy bars on top that are helpful when you're lifting the case--especially because it weighs a ton. The top panel includes an easily accessible connection dock with USB, FireWire, and audio ports, plus an eSATA connector, with additional USB, FireWire, and other ports on the back. Five external drive bays are easily accessed behind the hinged front panel. Our test system included a Lite-On Blu-ray DVD drive, a multiformat DVD burner, and a multiformat card reader drive-bay module, leaving two open bays for expansion.
Opening the side panel (insulated to keep the system's noise levels down) is easy, and the neat and tidy interior has plenty of room for expansion. Adding upgrades couldn't be much easier, thanks to a tool-less design that features push-button locks and pull-out aluminum racks for easy hard-drive installation. But some upgrades could be costly: For example, adding a matching pair of Corsair XMS 1GB DDR3 RAM sticks to raise the system's memory to 4GB would cost about $400. A Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler, four 120mm case fans, and a cooling attachment for the graphics board provide sufficient thermal management.
The $4299 (as of 11/2/07) Power Infinity Pro model we tested represents only one of several different configurations that CyberPower offers. Our test system also came with a generous 1.8 terabytes of hard-disk space, consisting of two 150GB, 10,000-rpm Western Digital Raptor drives (configured in a RAID 0 array) for performance and two 750GB, 7200-rpm Hitachi drives for backup and data storage that can hold hundreds of hours of video.
The included dual Sylvania 22-inch wide-screen monitors (SK2201W-B) have thin bezels that make positioning them closely side by side easier, but you get no height-adjustment control for maximum flexibility in setting them up. The picture quality was very good, with crisp readable text (even at 8 points) and nicely saturated color when we viewed still or moving images. The cordless Logitech MX3200 keyboard presents a host of useful extra keys and a wrist pad that's comfortable to type on. The MX600 laser mouse also benefits from an ergonomic design that fits nicely in the hand.
The CyberPower Power Infinity Pro is clearly aimed at enthusiasts and other early adopters who don't mind paying a premium for the latest technology. But considering that the market has few SSE-4 optimized apps, mainstream users may want to wait a bit longer before taking the plunge.
Read More......iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F860-A
This gaming PC packs solid extras, but it lacks performance chops.
The iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F860 has a peculiar moniker. Paladin? Its general performance indicates that this system is closer to a stable hand than to an itinerant warrior (and given its size, the roaming it does is unlikely to be far, far from home).
Priced at $2199 (as of April 16, 2009) the Gamer Paladin F860-a is relatively inexpensive for a gaming PC. Still, for $600 less, you could buy a power PC--like the Micro Express MicroFlex 92B--that delivers better performance. Our test system came configured with the 2.93-GHz 940 Intel Core i7 CPU, rather than with the meatier 3.2-GHz 965 CPU we commonly see on gaming systems, and it packed a single 1TB hard drive. On the other hand, its 6GB of DDR3-1333 memory is substantially more than the usual 2GB to 4GB we see on power PCs.
Unfortunately, the Paladin F860-a's score of 134 on our WorldBench 6 performance test suite is one of the poorer marks we've recorded for its category. Relying on a single PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 graphics card, the system achieved frame rates of 62 frames per second on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and 72 fps on Unreal Tournament 3 (each run at 2560 by 2100 resolution and high quality). PCs configured with the top-of-the-line single-card offering from either ATI (the Radeon 4870 x2) or nVidia (the GTX 280) achieve much higher frame rates on these tests. We're surprised that iBuyPower skimped on the graphics card: Even if opting for a top-tier graphics card had forced the company increase its price for the Gamer Paladin F860-a by another hundred dollars or so, the rig's total cost would still be lower than that of most gaming PCs we've tested.
The Cooler Master HAF 932 case offers a great mixture of screw-free upgradability, extensive front-panel connectivity, and unique features--such as a rubber-covered, water-cooling fill hole on the top of the case. Too bad iBuyPower decided to paint the Gamer Paladin F860-a's chassis with an eye-straining red-and-black theme. The black base and red accents look great if you're staring at the case head-on, but the side paneling's solid red might be too much for your home office or dorm room to handle.
Our system arrived with two LG Electronics optical drives in place--a Blu-ray and HD DVD-ROM drive and a standard DVD burner. The chassis has room for four additional 5.25-inch externally accessible devices as well, and five more hard drives can fit into the system's easy-to-use internal 3.5-inch drive trays. A single PCI Express x4 slot joins two free PCI Express x16 slots and one PCI connection for all your motherboard add-ons. As shipped, the case's excellent wiring job provided plenty of room for airflow and for new hardware installation.
Though it lacks an HDMI connection, the Gamer Paladin F860-a can accommodate most external devices on both the front and the rear of its chassis. On the back, you get eight USB 2.0, one FireWire 400 port, one eSATA port, two gigabit ethernet connections, optical and coaxial SPDIF, and integrated 5.1 surround sound. On the front, five USB 2.0 ports are joined by a single FireWire 400 port, an eSATA port, and a media card reader. Few systems offer this much connectivity.
iBuyPower bundled a couple of rather lackluster input devices with this PC: a generic-looking two-button mouse and a 104-button keyboard, both from Logitech. Neither is a worthy companion for a system built for gaming.
The Gamer Paladin F860-a aims for the look of a high-end gaming PC, and it succeeds on some fronts--connectivity, upgradability, and chassis design (minus the paint job). But it fails to deliver on what matters most. For general-purpose usability and gaming, we've seen better performance by more-affordable power PCs, let alone by the ferocious combatants at the top of our gaming PC charts.
AVADirect Core I7 SLI / Crossfirex Ddr3 Gaming System
For the price, this AVADirect desktop is a killer performer that falters a little in the graphics department, yet still rivals top gaming PCs overall.
AVADirect's Core i7 SLI/CrossFireX DDR3 Gaming System fails in the naming department, but I'll assume that the company's PC builders were too busy squeezing every last drop of performance out of this impressive machine to come up with a clever label. AVADirect's system isn't the fastest gaming PC we've tested, but it sure comes close. Factor in its $1840 price tag (as of 5/4/09)--nearly half the cost of the most inexpensive computers on our Top 5 Gaming PCs list--and it's hard to resist this system's allure.
Thanks to a CoolIT Domino A.L.C. liquid cooling system, AVADirect is able to crank the computer's 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 920 processor up to 3.32GHz. That's the fastest overclock we've seen on any of the Core i7-based gaming PCs that have come through the PC World Test Center, and it helps the machine achieve performance comparable to that of higher-priced rivals such as Falcon Northwest's 3.2GHz Mach V and Hardcore Computer's 4.0GHz quad-core Reactor. Our test model came with 3GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and a single Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB hard drive. There's room for more of both--a good thing, since each is a little substandard compared with what the top gaming PCs offer.
Our configuration's sole eVGA GeForce GTX 285 graphics card delivered excellent results on our two primary benchmarks. But the recorded frame rates, while great for the tested games, were anywhere from 10 to 30 percent lower than those of several other gaming desktops we've reviewed. What does that mean? While the 86-frames-per-second result on our Enemy Territory: Quake Wars benchmark and the 102-fps result on our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark (both at 2560 by 1600 resolution, high quality) certainly made for a flawless gaming experience, this AVADirect system is nevertheless too underpowered to handle future titles, which will inevitably demand more graphical muscle. That said, with a WorldBench 6 score of 153, it's only 6 percent slower than the three $3200-to-$10,000 gaming PCs that were tied for the top spot on WorldBench 6 at the time of this writing.
A great amount of connectivity options are on the front and rear of the Antec Nine Hundred midsize-tower case. AVADirect has covered the bases, installing eight USB connections, one FireWire 400 port, and one eSATA connection on the back of the case; accompanying them are two gigabit ethernet ports, an audio optical-out, coaxial S/PDIF, and integrated 5.1 surround sound. Balancing extreme performance with usability, the company also put three USB ports and a single eSATA port on the front, and as if that weren't enough, it threw in an all-in-one media card reader for good measure.
The interior of this PC is one of the cleanest I've seen. The wires are neatly tied together and tucked away, leaving plenty of room for you to work even given how much space the Domino A.L.C. cooler takes up. The motherboard has a single free PCI Express x4 slot, two PCI Express x16 slots, and one PCI slot. No 5.25-inch bays are free, due to the presence of two Samsung SH-S223 disc burners. You might see having both drives as being somewhat pointless, so you may want to mark one for removal should you ever wish to add another 5.25-inch device (like a Blu-ray player). Five of six 3.5-inch hard-drive bays are yours for the tinkering, but be prepared to bring your toolbox--none of the upgrades I just mentioned is tool-less. Worse, each set of three drive bays has a total of 16 screws that you must remove prior to manipulating a single storage element. Yuck.
Our test model came with a plain Dell keyboard and mouse that provide no functionality beyond the essentials. AVADirect offers other mice and keyboards for purchase as part of the customized machine you order, so that's a mild relief.
The biggest redeeming quality of AVADirect's Core i7 SLI/CrossFireX DDR3 Gaming System is its cost. This computer performs remarkably well in general, which balances out its less-than-perfect graphical abilities. Even if you were to buy an additional GeForce card and link the two through SLI (or if you were to buy two ATI cards; the hybrid motherboard supports both CrossFire and SLI), you'd still undercut the price of most of the gaming PCs on our Top 5 list--and you'd end up with a machine that performs a hair's breadth away from the best in the class Read More......Falcon Northwest Mach V
If you can afford it, the Mach V packs in the latest technologies--including Intel’s new Core i7 processor--for the pinnacle of powerful PC performance.
Falcon Northwest's Mach V gaming desktop is a firecracker inside a beautiful aluminum chassis. While the Silverstone Temjin TJ03 full tower case itself is nothing new, the Mach V's internal setup represents the fastest PC we have ever tested on nearly every benchmark we could toss at this overclocked monstrosity.
The Mach V sports a spanking-new (Nehalem-based) Intel Core i7 965 Extreme processor that's been overclocked from 3.2 GHz to 3.8 GHz using only air cooling. Added to this is more RAM than we've ever seen in a desktop machine--a whopping 12GB of DDR3-1066 memory--along with an Intel 80GB solid state drive for booting and a 1-terabyte, 7200-rpm Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive for storage. Although it didn't factor into our rating or system rankings chart (we rated all the gaming PCs in our current roundup on performance alone, excluding bundled monitors or peripherals), Falcon will also throw in a high-quality 22-inch Samsung 2243 LCD for an additional $400 on top of the system's $7395 price (as of November 11, 2008).
Although that premium price places it among the most wallet-crippling systems we've reviewed, you definitely get amazing bang for your buck. The Mach V achieved a score of 163 in our WorldBench 6 test suite. That's the highest result we've ever seen, but one that's equaled by two other new gaming machines: Hardcore Computer's Reactor and Xi's MTower HAF-SLI. The Xi pushes the limit for overclocking by cranking an older 3.33-GHz Core 2 Duo E8600 to an eyeball-popping 4.5 GHz, while the Reactor completely submerges its components in nonconductive oil (including a 3.2-GHz QX9770 CPU overclocked to 4 GHz); stay tuned for full reviews.
Helped out by dual 2GB ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards in CrossFire mode, the Mach V beat the frame rates of these and other recent gaming PCs for all the games (and resolutions) we threw at it. It even produced a smooth-playing average of 145 frames per second (fps) in Unreal Tournament 3 (under high settings) at 2560 by 1600 resolution. Next best in that taxing test: the Hardcore Computer Reaktor, whose three overclocked nVidia GTX-280 boards (in tri-SLI mode) achieved 113 fps in the same test.
This particular Mach V configuration includes an LG Blu-ray burner/HD-DVD reader, in addition to a Lite-on DVD writer. For expandability, four external 5.25-inch drive bays are open for upgrades, as are four internal 3.5-inch hard-disk bays. Overall, The Mach V's internals are well put together, with all cables neatly grouped and concealed where possible.
The Mach V's Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard holds a good number of ports: eight USB, two Firewire 400, and one eSATA. You also get built-in 5.1-channel audio and two ethernet ports. The front of the case is a touch more anemic, hiding four USB ports and a single Firewire 400 port beneath a locking door. At least there's plenty of room to plug in the Mach V's Logitech G15 keyboard (included). We'd almost rather not plug in its companion mouse, as the Logitech G9's misplaced DPI buttons are hardly satisfying for the kinds of games you'll be playing on this sweet rig.
Though it's loaded to the gills with high-end components, note that key parts of this killer system can't be upgraded without a big purchase, which some may find frustrating. For one thing, it has no available PCI Express x16 slots, which means that adding a new video card will entail replacing the two ATI Radeon HD 4870 cards (top-of-the-line units) that come with the system.
The Mach V is a new King of Speed that crushes every benchmark we threw at it. And for its price, you'd expect nothing less from this ultrapowered gaming machine Read More......CyberPower Black Pearl
This $3799 (as of March 1, 2009) gaming PC is a warship of a desktop rig, with connections for a extensive range of cables. Though the Black Pearl varies in performance from average to great depending on the game you're playing, it is a solid PC for the price.
Our review unit's configuration included a 3.2GHz Intel Core i7 965 processor--the fastest CPU you can purchase on the market today--but only 3GB of DDR3-1600 RAM; it also carried two super-fast, 10,000-rpm 150GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives in a striped RAID configuration, plus a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 drive for storage.
Two XFX GTX 280 graphics boards in an SLI configuration handle video responsibilities--a curious choice, since a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics board can output nearly the same performance. Sure enough, the Black Pearl managed to outpace our current gaming performance champion, the Falcon Northwest Mach V, on only one of our games tests: 124 frames per second to 119 fps in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (at normal quality and 2560 by 2100 resolution). Retested at high quality settings and same resolution, the Mach V topped the Black Pearl on Enemy Territory, 112 fps to 82 fps-the latter being an average score in the gaming PC spectrum.
The CyberPower system fared better against its peers on our Unreal Tournament 3 tests, delivering frame rates that trounced similarly priced rivals by more than 30 fps at both medium and high quality settings. The Mach V beat the Black Pearl on both benchmarks, but it also costs twice as much. Nevertheless, we were disappointed by the Black Pearl's WorldBench 6 score of 148 in the PC World Test Center, an average mark for a power PC and 15 points below the Mach V's 163).
The interior of the Black Pearl's Cooler Master ATCS 840 tool-free chassis offers room for whatever expansions you might want to make to this already loaded setup. The case has five 5.25-inch drive bays and six 3.5-inch drive bays, two PCI Express x16 card slots, one PCI Express x4 card slot, and one PCI card slot. The two XFX GTX 280 video cards dominate the motherboard's PCI connections, but you can squeeze in another PCI Express x4 card if you wish. Our system configuration filled four of the five available 5.25-inch drive bays with a Sony Optiarc Blu-ray reader and DVD burner, a media-card reader, and a two-bay fan controller--not a bad array of add-ons. On the front of the Black Pearl, CyberPower's included an NZXT Sentry LX fan controller, which enables you to check temperatures on your rig and adjust fan speeds accordingly.
Connectivity options on the back of the system start with eight USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 400 port, one eSATA port, optical and coaxial SPDIF connections, integrated 5.1 surround sound, and two gigabit ethernet ports. On the front, you'll find five USB 2.0 ports, a second FireWire 400 port, and a second eSATA port. As configured, our Pearl lacked only an HDMI port and a DisplayPort.
CyberPower bundled Microsoft's Sidewinder mouse and X6 keyboard with our review unit. The former offers plenty of buttons for gaming, as well as on-the-fly sensitivity toggles, macro recording functionality, and a button that launches Vista's games explorer. The keyboard provides macro functionality, swappable "normal" and "gaming" keyboard modes, rapid-fire button locks, a removable keypad, and a ton of fat, backlit buttons.
The Black Pearl doesn't exactly rule the seas as a gaming machine. But its low price eases the sting of its performance shortcomings, and its multiple connectivity and input device options raise its overall system usefulness to a very high level.
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