Evesham Axis 3200+BT

Aside from price, there's not a lot left to differentiate one PC from another these days - practically anything will do what you want it to. But there are some exceptions, and serious 3D gaming is one of them. Not only do you need a powerful graphics card, but you'll also need a respectable monitor and, ideally, a setup that looks the part too.

At first glance, the Evesham Axis seems to fit the bill. With AMD's top-of-the-line Athlon XP 3200+ on board and a 256MB ATi Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, the Axis 3200+ is fearsomely powerful. Combined with Nvidia's nForce 2 chipset, courtesy of the MSI MS-6729 motherboard, this is about as fast on paper as you'll get from non-tweaked components. All this adds up to some impressive benchmark results, with our 2D suite returning an amazing overall score of 2.1. And the 3D performance is reasonable too, if not quite as quick as we'd hoped, with 3DMark2001 SE scoring 15,969 in 32-bit XGA, while 3DMark03's DirectX 9-based Mother Nature test managed a future-proof frame rate of 35.5fps.

This is all to be expected from a high-end gaming PC, but a bit of a surprise comes in the form of the 19in ViewSonic G90f+ CRT monitor. With TFT panels gradually relegating these giants to computing history, it's an unusual choice, but not entirely unreasonable. While flat screens are getting better, they still don't have complete flexibility over resolutions or the immediate response of a good CRT for fast-moving action.

That's all well and good, but unfortunately, the G90f+ isn't a particularly fine CRT. Not only is there just a single captive D-SUB input, but it suffers from substandard focus and dubious geometry, particularly when you take the resolution up. It won't be a problem if you're just playing games or watching DVD movies, but as soon as you start word processing or browsing the Internet the fuzziness becomes annoying. Although this screen will go all the way to 1,920 x 1,400 at 60Hz, it was only really happy at a disappointing resolution of 1,024 x 768 at 85Hz. It's adequate, but it hardly justifies the several square foot of space it takes up.

But this is the only weak link in an otherwise well-featured system. The tool-less, lockable case, for example, with its HR Giger-esque black and silver fascia, is solidly built and offers trendy neon blue lights for power and disk activity, as well as a neon-blue Akasa fan at the front.

The build quality continues into the immaculate insides, with every cable crimped and channelled to ensure maximum airflow. The front and side panels are lever operated, offering easy access to the innards should you wish to poke around, and any PCI cards are secured by a plastic plunger. While there's plenty of upgrade potential in the three free slots, you won't need to change the components in a hurry. A V.92 modem sits in one, with another taken up by the excellent Sound Blaster Audigy 2. This is still the best choice for gamers, and with the Creative Inspire 6.1 6700 speaker set it makes an impressive audio setup.

The two 256MB sticks of PC2700 DDR RAM should see you through for a while too, although a single DIMM socket is still available for more. Disk space shouldn't be a problem either, as the Axis packs a 120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard disk with 8MB of cache. There's also a separate DVD-ROM and a nippy 52x/24x/52x CD-RW, although there's sadly no DVD writer. There are, however, two USB ports on the front, giving practical access for thumbdrives and, while the FireWire socket is blanked off on the front panel, the Audigy 2 provides one on the back, along with another port on a backplate connected to the motherboard.