Product Reviews

A barebones kit is probably the easiest way to build your own PC, as you get all the main components fitted inside a case. You just have to add a processor, memory, hard disk, optical drive and graphics card to get your own custom computer. Asus' Vintage V2-AH2 might not be the most attractive of cases, but it's affordable and packs in a motherboard that supports AMD's latest Socket AM2 processors.

The black and silver design of the mini-tower case won't be to everyone's liking, but there's a surprising amount of room inside. There's room for two optical drives, two external 3" drives and a front flap neatly hides audio, FireWire and two USB2 ports. Inside the case there's room for a single hard disk, although you could use the external 3" drive bays if you wanted to fit more disks. The motherboard uses Nvidia's C51PV chipset, which also has onboard GeForce 6150 graphics. This is the first motherboard and barebones system we've seen with built-in DVI and analogue outputs, so you can run two monitors from this one PC.

Graphics performance isn't very good and you can't play the latest 3D games. However, the GeForce 6150 is a cut above onboard Intel graphics, so you should be

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able to play older games or strategy titles, as these don't require as much 3D power. If you want to play games, the PCI-E x16 slot means you can install your own graphics card. The provided 300W power supply doesn't have a PCI-E connector, so you'll need a molex-to-PCI-E adaptor to install a card that needs external power.

The AM2 Socket supports AMD's latest range of processors, although we had to flash the BIOS before it would accept our Athlon 64 FX-62 processor. The V2-AH2 also supports the latest memory and you can fit up to 4GB of DDR2 800MHz memory in a dual-channel configuration using the four DIMM slots.

There's plenty of room for peripherals, with four SATA2 ports, which can be configured in a RAID array, two IDE ports and two PCI and one PCI-E x1 slots. The expansion cards are all held in place by a metal retainer. This is difficult to remove, and makes it hard to fit any expansion cards. The rear of the case houses the 5.1 analogue audio outputs (there are no digital outputs), gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and four USB2 ports.

Installation of Windows is easy and Asus' driver CD has an install-all function, which installs all the necessary drivers in sequence, rebooting the PC in between each one. Unfortunately, the CD is bootable, so you either have to disable CD booting for an unattended install or be on hand to make sure this doesn't happen. Performance using our FX-62 processor and 1GB of DDR2 800MHz memory was very good and in line with other boards we've tested.

The Vintage V2-AH2 doesn't have everything we'd like to see, such as a digital output for the audio, and it's not the most attractive barebones case, but it's very good value and has onboard graphics. If you want to build a powerful but affordable new PC, this is a bargain.