Product Reviews

It's traditionally, and annoyingly, the case that while PC hardware gets cheaper, the demands of software increase, so you still end up paying the same for a usable system. In the last year, though, powerful desktop PCs have got cheap. Inexpensive dual-core processors can make short work of even demanding tasks, and the falling cost of LCD monitors has helped too. However, there's still such a thing as false economy, and some PCs, though OK on paper, don't have the quality of peripherals or the upgrade potential to make them real bargains.

This system from Eclipse Computers only costs £400, and that includes VAT and delivery. It's a suspiciously small price, but once we unpacked it we found Eclipse had done a great job putting it together.

The supplied monitor is a 19-inch widescreen with a native resolution of 1,440 x 900 pixels. That's a good size for most purposes, and what impressed us was the image quality it produced. White was bright and pure, and decent contrast produced sharp text. Colours were vibrant and accurate. It wasn't so impressive in our more technical tests for subtle blending, but that's asking a lot of a budget LCD.

The monitor is connected to an nVidia GeForce 8500GT graphics card, an unexpected treat in a PC at this price. This comes from nVidia's latest range of DirectX 10 compatible cards, so in theory it's capable of delivering the latest graphical effects. In practice, it's not fast enough to play modern 3D games at full

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trot, and we had to reduce the resolution and detail settings to get our Call of Duty test to run smoothly. It's fine for the odd round of digital golf, or strategy games - just don't expect 3D to match an Xbox 360.

Performance in general applications was far more impressive, with the dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ processor and an adequate 1GB of RAM racing through our tests. It's easily fast enough for everyday Windows Vista tasks like web browsing, office software and watching movies. You'll also be fine with light video editing or photo manipulation, though for more demanding tasks you'd want more RAM.

Room for manoeuvre

Fortunately, the Eclipse MAX has all the spare slots and ports you'll need for future upgrades. There are empty memory slots for extra RAM, PCI and PCI-Express slots for adding expansion cards like TV tuners, and free SATA ports for additional hard disks. The power supply has a 450W rating, so any additional components are unlikely to overload it.

One of the few downsides of this system is the 160GB hard disk. That's not tiny, but if you hoard video, audio or photo files it'll fill up. Bear in mind that 10GB is already taken up with Windows Vista Home Premium. Notice that you're not fobbed off with the cut-price Basic version, so you get the Premium extras like Windows Media Center for browsing and playing your music and movies.

The only other disappointment is the lack of bundled speakers. It's sensible of Eclipse, though, to leave them out rather than throw in a poor cut-price pair at the cost of compromises elsewhere. A decent pair of 2.1 speakers (stereo plus subwoofer) will cost around £25, so factor that in if you want to enjoy music and movies properly. If you only need to hear Windows' bleeps, the monitor's speakers will suffice.

For £400 you're not going to get the perfect PC; the trick is to find the right compromises. A smallish hard disk and a lack of bundled speakers is a small price to pay for a fast PC with a dedicated graphics card and a decent monitor.