Ok, we will get straight to the point – this is the best mid range gaming desktop we have ever had in our labs. It costs $1,149 and will be coming out by this July. The computer is powered by six core AMD processor which not the fastest in the market right but while gaming, the performances were above our expectations. The feature set is quite solid and it will appeal to budget gamers or any one looking for an entertainment centric desktop. The exteriors of the Dell Studio XPS 7100 are quite sleek but it is messy on the inside. Dell has put in a double wide 3D card and in order to keep it stable, there is a mounting bracket inside the cabinet. The drive cage on the inside has been expanded to hold two more hard drives now but we would have liked if the hard drives were accessbile from the outside since this would have made swapping more easy. Dell will have to redesign its cases for that, but we would ask the manufacturer to do it soon and make it on the lines of Origin or Gateway.

Now as we have mentioned above that liking or disliking the Gateway FX6831-01 will largely depend on your aesthetic sense, so there is no sense of talking about that here. So let’s concentrate on the areas that everyone will use and will have somewhat similar opinions. To start with it’s the front accessible hard drive of Gateway FX6831-01; this feature has been seen in many other PC’s as well, so it’s nice to see that it has been accepted by the users. The Gateway FX6831-01 gives access to its two hard-drive bays and both the drive bays traits a removable tray. Just place the hard drive on the tray and it will automatically line up with the data and power inputs, so you won’t have to deal with the any sort of mess of cables. The makes the data transfer and taking the data drives easier and faster, and that is what we all want in modern times. One another prominent feature for FX6831-01 is its media card reader/port hub, which is  [...]

We think that the Puget Echo II is overpriced with $999 price tag to offer 2.93GHz Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 128MB Intel GMA X4500 graphics card, 160GB hard-drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. Its Zotac motherboard has HDMI, DVI, S/PDIF wireless networking and audio ports that you may require in a home computer. You will get the same configuration in $400 less from Gateway SX2840-01. It provides 1TB hard-drive, 6GB RAM, 64MB Intel graphics card and same operating system for $559; but does not have Wi-Fi. However, you can add $25 USB Wi-Fi dongle for the same. That’s why, we will advise you to go for Gateway desktop rather than choosing Puget one. We will prefer the Puget to provide a good price to configuration ratio for its further models. We are disappointed with its case because there is no marking on the DVD compartment that tells how to open it. In contrast, the competitors provide all the necessary indications and marking with similar  [...]

The Nvidia had finally released 3D chip – GeForce GTX 480 in the DirectX 11 era. The Velocity Micro Edge Z55 costs $3499 and comes with the same graphics card. However, this graphic card consumes a lot of power and heats up easily, but it works very fast. We appreciate the Velocity Micro to install a custom fan that mounts upon the graphics card to cool down the heat. The Edge Z55 desktop features 4GHz Core i7 930 processor, 6GB RAM, (2) GTX 480 graphic cards with 1GB video memory, 1TB Hitachi hard-drive, Blu-ray burner, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and 64GB Patriot solid-state-drive. In contrast, Falcon Northwest Mach V and Origin Gensis cost $4999 and $4998 respectively. It means that you can get the quite similar configuration desktop within budget price of $3499. $4999 priced the Falcon NorthWest Mach V features 4.18GHz Core i7 980X Extreme processor, 12GB DDR3 SD RAM, single dual-chip 2GB ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, 1TB Western Digital  [...]

HP Pavilion Slimline s5120y costs around $450, which is not worthy after considering its slow performance, limited features and some design gaffes. The Slimline model is out-dated computer like Dell Inspiron 537s. HP is the first company to bring the slim-tower concept to the market. Now, the Gateway has also adopted the same concept. The older HP Slimline models did not have additional external drive port. Before Slimline series, the previous HP models had a Pocket Media removable hard-drive port at the bottom. HP has removed the Pocket Media Drives and it is probably due to lack of customer enthusiasm. This gives you more free space inside the cabinet for upgrades. HP Pavilion Slimline s5120y has 2.7GHz Athlon dual-core processor that provides good performance. It has 500GB hard-drive, which is smaller as compared to 640GB hard drive in Gateway SX2800-01. After looking at all the ports located on backside and front-side, anyone can say that HP  [...]

This machine from Dell is for gamming and general day-to-day activities. The hardware that has gone inside the machine makes it capable of high end usage. Dell has revamped the looks of the cabinet to make it look better than the usual boring cases. The machine is powered by 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 860 which is extremely fast and hence high end chores such as gaming or graphic development can be handled easily by this computer. A fast processor is useless unless complimented by plenty of RAM. Dell does exactly that by putting 8 GB, 1066 MHz DD3 SD RAM to make sure the computer remains fast. This computer cannot handle games in all its glory but it can certainly do well in mid range gamming. There is GeForce 240 GTS graphics card in the machine for churning out great looking graphics. We thought that Dell could have got us a better graphic card by sacrificing wireless networking card. The hardware inside is good for now but it is certainly not a future  [...]

HP is out with another computer, this time it is HP Pavilion p6210y and it has got plenty of good hardware but it doesn’t beat the Gateway SX2800-01 which is standing hard at number one position in our tests till now. The front of the cabinet has a glossy finish of black color so it is sure to attract a lot of finger prints. There is a panel in the front for plugging in headphones so that you don’t have to go running behind the computer every time. Aside from that there is a media card reader. Comparing this desktop when it comes to price, the HP Pavilion P6210y costs the same as Dell Inspiron 545s-3055NBK. The specs are the same of the two computers but HP gets the edge because of the quad core AMD processor. Gateway SX2800-01 is still the better computer than this product by HP, it has an edge when it comes to performance and it also costs less. When it comes to expansion cards, HP Pavilion P6210y has a single empty 16x PCI Express slot to put in your graphic card. If you  [...]

The Dell Inspiron i545s-3055NBK is slim but it comes at the cost of performance. This budget desktop is not for your advanced user or high end gamers. The computer is powered by 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 which is pretty fast but not on par with other fast systems that are available on the market. The RAM in the computer is 6 GB DDR2 RAM of 800 MHz, we would have liked a DDR3 rated RAM. A better quality RAM would have given better performance. There is no discrete graphic card in the computer and all you get is 256MB (shared) Intel GMA 3100 integrated graphics chip. Any high end game or graphic demanding application will bring this system to its heels. This computer was made with the budget user in mind who needs a computer only for basic purposes and not for gaming or any high end applications. An absence of a discreet card also means you cannot watch movies in all their glory. But there is plenty of memory space for you store all your files with the 750 GB, 7200 RPM disk.  [...]

Asus Essentio CM5570-AP003 isn’t among the best desktops that we have received in the test center. In fact it is the same CM5570-AP006 but it has inferior hard ware, which means it is a stripped down version of Asus’ previous product. The computer is fast and you won’t have any problems running high end applications that are speed crazy. The processor used is Intel Pentium E5300 / 2.6 GHz, a Quad Core processor. It has L2 cache with 2 MB for each processor and the processor has data bus speed for 800 MHz. The desktop is good for high end applications but cannot take gamming because it doesn’t have a discrete graphic card. Intel GMA X4500 is what you get on the motherboard which is integrated graphics and the size is 1759 MB. If you want to play games on this computer you can always add a graphic card as this mother board gives you an empty 16x PCI Express graphics card slot. Along with this there are  [...]

We had got Acer Aspire Revo net top for review before this and there are lots of similarity between the two when it comes to hardware. This means that the Averatec All-In-One D1130 is not meant for your gadget freak but for the basic user who needs the computer just for typing on a word processor or internet activities like web surfing and email. The computer has 1.6 GHZ Atom processor which is pretty slow. We don’t know why such slow processors are still manufactured. They cannot take the power hungry soft wares that are manufactured these days, let alone high end games. The display is the prettiest part of the device and the 18.4 inch display will give you a resolution of 1600X900 which is a little less than what a display of this size is capable of. Averatec's display of 18.4-inch is capable of 1,680x945 resolution. The display is good, we played a couple of DVDs on this device and really enjoyed watching on the display. The sound quality is good but it is really low and  [...]