Phenomenal processing power, but not so hot graphics
Desktop computers are supposed to be on their way out – most users, we are told, want portable, powerful and practical laptops instead.
But manufacturers continue to churn them out and they are getting cheaper. It’s now possible to pick up an impressive desktop computer for hundreds of pounds less than the equivalent laptop.
Advent’s PQG-9002 is a good example: it uses an AMD Phenom X4 9150e processor with 4GB of memory and has a large 640GB hard disk for storage. There’s also an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card with 512MB of its own memory.
All that combines to make a very good specification. It is not an ideal gaming computer – the graphics card isn’t particularly impressive – but for almost anything else it is ideal.
Video editing, for instance, won’t tax it particularly whereas some similarly priced laptops would struggle to cope.
It’s an odd-looking PC: the squat case has a shiny black plastic front panel that is marred by a large silver (or silver-coloured plastic) rectangle, which turns out to be a drop-down panel that hides a memory card reader, sound connections and two USB sockets.
There are four more USB sockets at the back, along with keyboard and mouse connections, a parallel port, network socket and surround-sound outputs.
The graphics card has connections for VGA, DVI and HDMI cables.
It is loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium and Microsoft Works for word processing and spreadsheets.
The supplied keyboard and mouse were decent enough, comfortable without being particularly stylish, but it doesn’t come with a monitor.
Although this computer isn’t short on processing power, it’s not the best-value computer we have seen recently.
Indeed it’s possible to pick up a cheaper base unit (one without a monitor, like this one) with better specifications, or for a similar price, a similarly powerful PC with a screen, such as the Cyberpower Infinity Aries SE (look out for a review on the site shortly).
