Product Reviews

Building a sub-£1,000 PC is a tough balancing act, but Evesham can claim a better record than most when it comes to making PCs to a budget. And although the Solar Storm RD has clearly shaved some corners, there's still more than enough here to make it a challenger to the Evesham Solar Visto Creation, our sub-£1,000 PC of choice.

Everything is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, a 65nm part with a core clock speed of 1.8GHz. It may not be at the very top of Intel's range, but it's no slouch either: with 2GB of 667MHz RAM for company, the Solar Storm achieved a perfectably respectable overall score of 1.01 in our application benchmarks. Most jobs will be dispatched with ease.

It's particularly capable as a home server, housing your film and music files and streaming them to devices around the home. The lack of a wireless card is a disappointment, but the motherboard's Gigabit Ethernet atones slightly. The 320GB hard disk is another huge plus. The Western Digital Caviar SE's 7,200rpm spin speed and 8MB buffer aren't groundbreaking, but they won't cause noticeable slowdowns in mainstream apps and games. The motherboard's single IDE channel is connected to a Sony optical drive capable of writing to all formats of disc including DVD-RAM.

Gaming is another competent area for the Solar Storm. 3D graphics power is courtesy of an Nvidia 8800 GTS. The lack of memory compared to the 720MB 8800 GT version barely showed in our Far Cry and Call of Duty 2 benchmarks, and at their highest settings we saw averages of 67fps and 38fps respectively. These are impressive

The monitor is a 19in 1,440 x 900 widescreen from Cibox. The LW1922C is exceptionally bright, and perfect for films and gaming. Our DisplayMate tests revealed a good range of RGB colour ramps, but the positives are offset by a noticeable amount of grain on solid colours. At full brightness, our technical tests not surprisingly revealed poor contrast leading to loss of highlight detail. It isn't terribly important for everyday working, gaming and video use, but anything requiring a high degree of accuracy should be avoided. The only interface available is analogue D-SUB, but this isn't a fatal deficiency in itself, as the monitor's auto setup mode works well.

As with the CPU, RAM and graphics card, Evesham has splashed out on the Foxconn P9657AA-8EKRS2H motherboard. Intel's 965 chipset ties everything together, and there are plenty of extras to ensure it will be one of the longest-lasting components in the system. Realtek's ALC883 controller supplies 7.1 HD audio and there are six internal SATA ports, complemented by an E-SATA port on the backplane. Add a second hard disk later and you'll be able to create one of several RAID arrays, including mirrored, striped and JBOD arrangements. It's a useful upgrade path should you decide to adapt the Solar Storm RD into a media workhorse. The chassis has room for expansion, with three free internal 3.5in bays and three free external 5.25in bays.

The best areas of the Solar Storm RD are the ones that count. We can live without gigabytes of pre-installed software and the priciest graphics cards, and the monitor is more than good enough for work, gaming and basic photo editing. Evesham's three-year warranty is also impressive, even if the last year is return-to-base - the company has its priorities right.

But the Evesham Solar Visto Creation remains the best you can get for less than a grand, and you can always upgrade your graphics card once DirectX 10 games are available. Or, for little extra, the Evesham Solar Storm foffers similar power and a superior and larger TFT.