PC Specialist Aurea i3-530 Pro review

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