Product Reviews

Cube 247's Serpens ST6 is very similar to the Sigma ST13 reviewed on page 29. It shares the same peripherals and Intel quad-core processor, but it has many of the Sigma's caveats.

Although the Serpens doesn't have as much RAM as the Sigma, 4GB is still twice as much as many other PCs at this price. The pre-installed 64-bit Vista Home Premium is necessary to take advantage of more than 3GB of RAM, but not all peripherals are compatible with 64-bit Windows. Only certain tasks benefit from so much memory, such as editing large video, photo and music files.

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games run fine under 64-bit Vista, and the Serpens has two GeForce 9600 GT graphics cards configured in SLI mode. They performed very well in our demanding 3D graphics tests, managing scores comparable to those achieved by a single GeForce 8800 GT card. Unfortunately, the two cards aren't particularly quiet.

There are nine USB2 ports in total, which compensates for the lack of accessible internal expansion slots. The twin graphics cards block access to the PCI slots, which could be inconvenient if you want to add a dedicated sound card or TV tuner. There's no shortage of drive bays for adding more hard disks or optical drives, though.

Cube247 bundles the same peripherals as the Sigma with the Serpens. The Creative T6100 5.1 surround-sound speakers have plenty of bass, which is good for games and movies, but music sounded muddy. Although the 22in widescreen monitor has an HDMI input instead of a DVI interface, you won't need an HDMI-to-DVI adaptor for a digital connection as the Serpens has two HDMI ports.

The Serpens is a fast gaming PC available for a great price, but check your existing peripherals for compatibility before buying.