Labs

Barebones kits

We built each barebones kit according to the manufacturer's instructions, noting if anything was poorly explained and whether we had any trouble fitting components.

To make our test results as consistent as possible we fitted similar components in each system. We fitted the Socket AM2 kits with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ processor, the Socket LGA77 kits with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and the Socket M kit with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200. We fitted 1GB of DDR2 RAM in each system. All the kits that accept a 3in hard disk were tested with identical 20GB Hitachi SATA hard disks.

We tested each kit either with its own processor cooler and fan, if applicable, or a stock Intel or AMD cooler. We noted whether each kit was particularly noisy or quiet when idle and when running our tests.

Although none of the integrated graphics chips could run our 3D benchmarks, we wanted to see how well they would perform when fitted with a dedicated graphics card. Where possible, we fitted each system with an ATI Radeon X190 Pro. For Shuttle's CrossFire-capable SX38P2 Pro, we also fitted two Radeon HD 380 cards.