Evesham Axis 3000+ P

The problem with going for top-line components, especially processors, is that you often end up paying a huge premium for flagship products. This could make it difficult for companies to produce bleeding-edge and affordable PCs, but with the Axis 3000+ P, Evesham has taken a step back from the fastest Athlon XP 3200+ chip and freed up the budget for some other interesting areas, including a 250GB Serial ATA hard disk and killer DVD combo drive.

Even so, the Athlon XP 3000+ is an immensely powerful basis for a system, especially when combined with the Asus A7N8X nForce2 motherboard. Add in two 512MB PC2700 DIMMs and a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro, and you're looking at a system that will fly along whatever you're doing. If you want proof, just look at the speedy result of 2.12 in our 2D benchmarks, with the Athlon XP once again shining in the raw number-crunching stakes.

Gamers will be pleased with the 3DMark2001 SE result of 16,841 in 32-bit XGA too, and with DirectX 9 support you'll be playing new 3D games well into the foreseeable future. Again, this is one step back from ATi's current flagship 256MB card, but unless you're pushing your machine to its limits the only difference you'll notice is a financial one.

There's more good news for gamers in the form of the updated Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, which now offers full 7.1 surround sound, with a second speaker at the rear that meets the full Dolby Digital EX specification, as well as the usual features such as EAX Advanced HD and DVD-Audio. To take advantage of all those outputs, Evesham has paired the card with some Creative Inspire T7700 7.1 speakers, which perform admirably in games and movies, but the harsh mid-range means you won't want to throw out your hi-fi just yet.

Things look pretty good too, thanks to the 17in Philips 170B4BS TFT. With bright backlighting, excellent definition and rich colours, it comes into its own during DVD movies, especially on the DVI-I input. However, the level of brightness is too much for everyday use, and the lack of brightness presets means you need to fiddle around to get it right. The front-panel buttons and intuitive OSD make light work of accessing settings elsewhere, though, and common functions are one or two clicks away.

The monitor's response time leaves hectic gaming sessions looking a touch blurry, but this isn't a problem most of the time. However, the vertical viewing angles are disappointing, and it could be better horizontally too. Thankfully, although the stand height isn't adjustable, the panel tilts through a good range to ensure a clear view from head-on, and with a small footprint.

It even looks smart, with its silver 18mm bezel complementing the stylishly brooding system case. This not only comes complete with glowing neon blue lights, but also employs a replaceable fascia, with a range of easily replaceable covers for £12 each.

Making changes on the inside is just as simple, with the tool-free design making access easy, even into the depths of the ample drive bays. Three spare PCI slots and a single DIMM socket provide reasonable expansion potential, and the tidy cabling ensures plenty of airflow too.

In fact, the only mar on the sci-fi good looks is the splash of beige from the LG optical drive nestling in the front bay. But this is easily forgivable when you realise that this is the newly A-Listed multiformat LG GSA-4040B (see p144), which will cope with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM (although we had some problems writing to DVD-RAM discs during testing). It's about as fast as you can get too, writing at 4x/2x, 4x/2.4x and 3x respectively. There's even a separate 16x DVD-ROM, this time in black, to make copying even easier.