Product Reviews

After last month's foray into the luxury system market with a system costing £1400, Systemax is now back to familiar territory with a more affordable £799 system. That's not to say that the company is slumming it. Far from it - on the whole, the Inspire A1700 Value consists of a quality selection of components that should, on paper, keep the whole family happy.

The system case is a typical squarish beige box with a large and friendly-looking on switch. It has an extra fan to keep things cool. Inevitably this generates noise but it's not unbearably loud. The Systemax should cope well with expansion thanks to a 3.5in and 5.25in external bay free, and one internal 3.5in bay. As a rule, CD-ROM style devices need 5.25in bays. Floppies and hard disks fit into 3.5in bays.

At the heart of the system is an Athlon XP 1700+ chip - no performance leader, but thanks to its true 1.47GHz clock speed, it's no slouch either. The Athlon sits in an MSI motherboard based on nVidia's nForce chipset. Unlike previous nForce-based systems, this one doesn't have built-in graphics. This gives PC makers more flexibility as they can pick any graphics card.

Systemax has correctly configured the motherboard's memory to take advantage of the nForce's TwinBank memory architecture. This makes Systemax sound very clever, but it's actually a simple matter of fitting the memory as two 128Mb modules, not one 256Mb one. This allows both the processor and graphics card chip simultaneous access to the PC's memory.

A third socket is available for additional memory, but filling this would narrow the link between memory and chipset from two 64-bit channels to just one. And this would diminish performance. So don't do it.

Systemax gets another thumbs up for wisely utilising the Communications and Network Riser (CNR) slot on the motherboard. Many motherboards have these connectors, into which you can plug a module, with useful additional audio or networking ports. The ports connect up to motherboard circuits that would be otherwise redundant.

In the case of the Systemax, the added ports are two further analogue audio outs, enabling the PC to provide a total of six channels, for 5.1 surround sound. To

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make the most of this, Systemax has included VideoLogic's new set of budget ZXR-500 speakers. Considering their low price, they produce a loud and rich sound. What's more, the supplied PowerDVD 4 software will even decode the superior DTS surround sound audio found on a handful of DVDs and send it to them. There's also a coaxial digital out on the riser module, so you can hook up to an external amp.

The Systemax is network-ready thanks to a port conveniently integrated into the nForce motherboard. There are also a total of four USB slots with two of these conveniently located at the front of the case, so you don't have to break your back attaching devices such as digital cameras or MP3 players. Unfortunately, the build quality of the case was suspect, with small bits of the metal frame holding the front USB sockets sticking out, which could catch someone's fingers if they weren't careful.

Of the five PCI slots on the motherboard, four are free, with one being taken up by a standard 56K modem. As we've said, one thing this version of the nForce chipset surprisingly doesn't integrate is a graphics chip. Instead, the AGP slot is filled with the first GeForce4 card we've seen in a review system. Sounds impressive, but this is the most basic version of the card, the GeForce4 MX 420. It has 64Mb of memory, but just the single data rate variety. The low clock speed and slow memory of the card cripple the new GeForce4 architecture. Consequently, the 3DMark 2001 score is a bit disappointing at 3998, though the 2D score of 5704 is excellent.

Storage is provided by a 41Gb IBM Deskstar drive that spins at 7,200rpm. This amount of space was huge not long ago, but those thinking of upgrading to broadband Internet access may well find they fill up the space with downloads in a surprisingly short time. More storage is provided by the Samsung CD-R/W drive, rated at 24-speed for CD-R burning, 10-speed for CD-R/W writing and 40-speed for reading CD-ROMs. Above this sits a DVD-ROM drive also with high ratings: 16-speed for DVDs and 48-speed for CD-ROMs.

The CTX monitor is a fairly decent 17in display, not the brightest or sharpest monitor we've seen but also far from the worst. It can reach a resolution as high as 1600x1200 at 75Hz and even 1280x1024 at 85Hz but the image clearly struggled at these settings. It looked its best at 1024x768 at 85Hz.

To round things off, the Logitech Corded Deluxe keyboard is sturdy and comfortable while the mouse is a decent three-button wheel affair.

Running Windows XP Home Edition, the A1700 Value is a very capable system for the price. The only real disappointment is that despite the GeForce4 branding it's underpowered in the 3D graphics department. Correct this and you'd have a system that could cope with almost anything.