Gateway DT10G review

Gateway's business line of PCs is all about reducing your total cost of ownership through "performance and manageability", and that's evident in the DT10 desktop family. Low power-draw, easy upgrading and no small amount of processing power is a good combination for any office desktop, and the DT10G largely succeeds in its aims.

The midi-tower case shares the same orange flash across its midriff as the small form factor DU10G, but this is no cramped space-saver. Clip off the screw-free, lockable side panel - which comes with a handy reference guide to the motherboard's ports and connections stuck on the inside - and you'll find a spacious, well-designed interior.

Our review model barely begins to fill the available bays and sockets, but should you want to upgrade in the future it's a doddle to do so. Every disk bay features a tool-free, slide-off locking bracket, and the internal hard disk bays sit perpendicular to the rest for easy access; a quick pinch to the sides of the bright-green caddy is all it takes to slide one out in a second.

A single 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard disk sits in the lowest of the four bays, neatly hooked up to the motherboard with the SATA cable tucked out of sight beneath it. A further cable connects the DVD writer and, aside from the usual power and front-panel connectors, the only remaining wire links the motherboard to the useful chassis intrusion detector.

The stock Intel cooler never rose above a faint hum in our tests, but there's nevertheless a funnel to take the hot air directly out of a side vent. This might be more useful should you opt for a hotter and more powerful quad-core processor, but this DT10G's Core 2 Duo E8400 didn't push it too hard, even at 3GHz. A single 2GB stick of DDR3 RAM leaves three slots free, and helped the Gateway to a solid 1.48 in our real-world benchmarks - more than enough for the smooth running of office applications. It's also Intel vPro-enabled.