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PC Specialist Aurea i3-530 Pro review

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Verdict

Despite the low price there's an awful lot of power here, and a solid PC behind it

Review Date: 21 Jan 2010

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £382 (£449 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

It's frugal with power, too. The processor, with its 73W TDP and integrated graphics, contributed to an idle power draw of just 52W – only 20W more than we’d expect from the average Atom-powered nettop – and even the peak power draw of 82W is less than we see most PCs consuming when idle. It highlights just how power-hungry modern graphics cards can be.

The chassis may be a budget model, but it’s not the ugliest case we’ve seen. The glossy black exterior looks smart and, even though it collects fingerprints, it won’t shame your desk. The selection of ports is generous, too, and includes nine USB sockets, an HDMI output and a media card reader.

Inside, the Aurea is serviceable but, as expected, pretty bare. Upgrade potential is mixed, with the motherboard offering spare PCI Express x16 and DIMM slots, but the case itself only has a single vacant hard disk bay and two empty 5.25in bays. Still, it’s enough headroom to upgrade it into a gaming system should the need arise later down the line.

PC Specialist has done a basic job of cable tidying, too. Leads emerge from the 350W power supply and snake all over the chassis but, with no separate motherboard tray or other finery inside, they’re difficult to hide: some are lashed together with the occasional cable-tie but, for the most part, they’re left to fend for themselves.

It’s also not a particularly quiet system, even without a graphics card and with only one case fan. Intel’s stock cooler is used to keep the processor chilled and hums accordingly, but the worst offender is the cheap 350W PSU, which emits a constant high-pitched whirr.

But it's a budget PC with impressive power, so when you look at that £382 exc VAT price tag it's not difficult to put aside the few issues it has. It’s the kind of price that until recently we'd have associated with low-power Pentium and even Atom PCs, but the Core i3 really shakes that up. At a good four times faster than most nettops, we can't wait for someone to build a Core i3 system in a small-form factor chassis.

While we wait for that, we're perfectly happy to recommend the PC Specialist Aurea i3-530. It’s cheap yet powerful, with a solid specification and an adequate chassis. On this evidence the Core i3 processor is the new benchmark for budget performance, and this PC takes full advantage.

Author: Mike Jennings

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Comments

User comments

These i3,5 and 7 processors seem to represent a real step up in performance and power efficiency. I notice that Dell has an Inspiron 15 i3 330m processor laptop, can't wait for a review on that. Would the onboard graphics be of any advantage to Photoshop elements 8.0?

By stokegabriel on 22 Jan 2010

Let's start a campaign for PC Pro to buy a sound meter, so they can list the sound level rather than "It's a bit loud."

By phantombudgie on 22 Jan 2010

Is the system capable of displaying full HD-video, such as from Youtube or iPlayer, with the built-in Intel graphics?

By piphil on 22 Jan 2010

"Buy PC Pro a sound-meter..."

... and an anechoic room. They should get some change from £10K-£20K.

Or use someone's?

By JohnGray7581 on 22 Jan 2010

I can do it.

Great idea by PhantomBudgie. This would really make a difference and then you would see others copying. I would be organise this if PCPro really wanted to.

By TheObvious on 24 Jan 2010

Dear JohnGray7581

PCs are used in real rooms, not anechoic chambers. If the sound echoes off the walls and makes the reading 5% higher it will not make a difference, all the PCs tested will be affected the same. I'm not going to sue them if I buy a PC and it's 29.5 decibels when measured under perfect conditions instead of 29, I just want to know if the Graphics card fan is going to rattle the windows or not.

By phantombudgie on 24 Jan 2010

Not Boxing Clever

Aurea have done well to bring this budget box to market, although it has still missed a few tricks along the way. It was good to see a reasonable on-board graphics chipset. If ALL boxes had noise reduction, or liquid cooling, the box could be made much smaller. The small incremental cost of the improvements would be offset by the savings on materials. The concept of the desktop box as a piece of furniture has passed.

By specious on 25 Jan 2010

Noise testing

We noise test all PCs in our group tests, where we're able to send them collectively to a specialist centre in Milton Keynes: it's not practical to noise test in central London due to the wide variety of background noises.

We're the only magazine in the UK that does this, but it's not practical to do it for every PC we review. One, it would cost too much: courier costs, plus the setup time involved at the testing centre, mean that it's only practical in groups. Second, PC manufacturers are generally unwilling to let us keep hold of the PCs for too long, so we can't keep them all and then send them up in one batch.

It's press week so I won't be able to respond too much to this thread, but if you have any more thoughts on this topic I'm happy to hear them.

Tim Danton
Editor, PC Pro

By TimDanton on 25 Jan 2010

Whilst I enjoy reading pcpro reviews, I dislike the fact the retailers take advantage of positive reviews by bumping up the prices. Cheapest I can find this for is £462. Whilst not a massive premium, it would be nice if reviewed itms could occassionally be purchased for the price shown on pcpro's review.

By jamesv1001 on 2 Feb 2010

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