Evesham.com Quest C800

You get what you pay for is usually a good rule of thumb when it comes to PCs. So Evesham.com's new budget system is something of a nice surprise. For a shade under £590, you're getting a capable machine.

Rather than a Pentium or an Athlon, the Quest C800 uses a new processor called the C3, made by a Taiwanese chip company called VIA. The C3 is not designed to compete with the latest, greatest processors that Intel and AMD offer. The intention has been to produce a chip that is as cheap as possible and is fast enough to cope with anything the average computer user can throw at it.

It's manufactured using a new type of process which means it uses less power than other chips. That may sound unremarkable, but if a processor generates less heat, it doesn't need a noisy fan to keep it cool. The Quest isn't a silent PC by any means, but it is certainly a lot quieter than most of the more potent machinery we've seen recently.

The C3 inside our review unit ran at 800MHz. It's not fast or as quick as an 800MHz Athlon or Pentium, but is able to cope with most of today's software. Unless you need to deal with things like video and large digital pictures, you won't have any problems.

Evesham.com has installed 128Mb of memory. Should you feel the need to install a little more, there are two extra slots free. There's also a 20Gb hard drive, which should be fine unless you're going to be loading it down with a lot of MP3s or large image files.

Surprisingly, Evesham.com has managed to squeeze a DVD-ROM drive into the budget, whereas we're more used to seeing CD-ROM drives in machines at this price. Its inclusion means you'll be able to load DVD-ROM software onto your computer and watch DVD movies too.

Even more surprisingly, there's a graphics card inside this machine. Systems under £700 tend to use integrated graphics, where the PC uses a graphics chip built onto the PC's motherboard. This adversely affects the PC's ability to play games.

The graphics card inside the Quest is based on nVidia's GeForce2 MX-400 chip, and has 32Mb of its own memory to play with, which turns the Quest into a reasonably capable games machine.

The supplied 17in monitor isn't the most amazing model we've ever seen, but the image is more than good enough for everyday use. Given the price of the system, there's little to complain about.

Sound capability is nothing to write home about but something had to go in a system in this price range. The integrated sound chip outputs to a pair of tiny speakers, which produce a rather weedy noise.

Windows Me is pre-installed, along with Sun's Star Office. This is a fully-featured office suite, along the lines of Microsoft's Office. It's not in the same league as Microsoft's equivalent, but its inclusion means you can get to work straight out of the box.

The Quest comes with a one-year return to base warranty but there is one catch: unlike Evesham.com's more expensive systems, technical support calls are charged at £1 per minute.

Ultimately, this is a very good PC for the price. You can access the internet, perform office tasks, play a few games and watch DVDs. Our only real concern is how future-proof it is. The 800MHz C3 can certainly cope with today's software, but give it a couple of years and it may struggle.

Contact
Evesham.com: 08707 287070 www.evesham.com

VERDICT Ease of use: ***** If you can use a PC, you can use the Quest Build quality: ***** A very well-built machine Performance: *** It's fine for the time being Features: **** It's very well-specified for the price Value for money: **** Watch out for the support call sting OVERALL: **** The Quest is a solid budget choice ALSO CONSIDER JAL DURON 700 Well-built and well-balanced, a cracking PC for the price. Now upgraded.£579 ***** Issue 80.