Evesham e-box

The main problem with the majority of PCs using Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) is that they're quite frankly too unsightly to take pride of place in your living room. Evesham's e-box aims to change this by using a stylish and compact case and keeping the fascia as streamlined and feature-free aspossible - only the slot-loading combo drive, two USB ports and a FireWire port disturb its slick silver front.

It's still not quite a match for a traditional DVD player when it comes to looks, though, and it's a mite larger as well as being significantly heavier. However, there are some great quality components inside, not least a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of memory and a huge 160GB hard disk, the latter offering more than enough storage space for all your media. This also earned it a very respectable 1.40 in our real-world tests, where it scored particularly well in multimedia applications.

The size of the case leads to some limitations when it comes to adding peripheral components, but Evesham circumvents this well by using a half-height Radeon 9600 graphics card - the fastest chip that can fit onto a half-height card. The 2.8GHz processor helps frame rates to keep playable in Unreal Tournament 2004 at 1,280 x 1,024, as the 3D speed scores below show, but Halo is a tougher test - you'll need to drop down to 1,024 x 768 to reach 30fps. It will certainly handle most games, though, and is more than goodÊenough to provide smooth video andÊDVD playback.

It also sports a DVI input, as well as an S-Video port - essential so that you can plug this PC into your television set. Where it falls behind the Hi-Grade DMS (see issue 114, p100) is the lack of SCART sockets. Still, the e-box's included TV tuner allows you to connect a VHS recorder and therefore record from the e-box, which is a nice touch. An 802.11b wireless card takes up a third PCI slot. This would obviously come in handy if you have a wireless network at home, as all the e-box's files could be shared with any other PC. Oddly, though, there's no modem on the RS300 motherboard - you'd have to fill up the final PCI slot if you need one. A 10/100 Ethernet port is included,Êhowever.

The e-box isn't without its flaws: the model that we received, albeit a pre-production unit, was rather noisy. This comes as no surprise, given that the Pentium 4 chip and large hard disk are likely to need an incredible amount of cooling in such a slim case. There are three fans inside - two drawing in a constant stream over the hard disk, and one 12cm fan cooling the CPU. Evesham says it will be replacing the 12cm fan with a much quieter model, though we'll have to wait and see whether this will reduce the noise to an acceptable level.

Overall, this is a very good stab at fitting a Media Center PC into the living room. It's also well priced, given the components inside, and so should be at the forefront of your mind if you're after an MCE PC.

Author: Mark Walsh