Evesham Evolution 3

Building computers isn't rocket science. If you put enough good quality components in a case and screw it together properly, you are already halfway to creating a fine PC. Evesham has taken this basic approach with its Evolution 3 model.

An Intel Pentium 4 processor running at 3GHz is always welcome and should give a PC enough muscle to shrug off even the most demanding tasks. Evesham has supplied the Evolution 3 with 512Mb of DDR memory, which helped it post some impressive scores in our system tests.

Another feature of this PC that aids performance concerns the 160Gb hard disk. Hard disk technology has remained pretty static for years now but Serial ATA drives are now becoming more commonplace. There is plenty of boring babble about why these are superior to conventional hard disks but put simply, Serial ATA drives can be faster than the older IDE system. As with lots of new PC technologies, you probably won't notice much difference unless you are doing something very demanding, such as video editing.

If you use your PC for playing the odd game, the presence of an ATi Radeon 9800-based graphics card will be welcomed. Even if you don't give two hoots about games, the fact that the card is based on ATi's All-in-Wonder technology should please you anyway. Such graphics cards have integrated TV tuners and allow owners to use their PC as a PVR (personal video recorder) to pause live television. It also comes with a remote control, so DVD movies, TV broadcasts and music can be controlled from the comfort of an armchair, rather than by fiddling around with the mouse and keyboard.

As we just mentioned, the Evolution can play DVD movies and it can also write DVDs, thanks to the inclusion of an LG Super-Multi recordable DVD drive, which reads and writes to all DVD formats.

The Viewsonic 17in TFT screen supplied with the Evolution is quite simply splendid. It connects to the PC using a DVI connector, which ensures that setting up and fiddling around with monitor settings is kept to a minimum. The screen image is very sharp and the colours are vivid. The stand is height adjustable and can be swung left or right to ensure a good viewing angle. Cable clips on the back of the stand keep the wiring tucked out of harm's way. Although it isn't hugely important, it is nice to see that the screen case and stand colour match the rest of the system.

With two front-mounted USB 2 ports and six at the rear, hooking up peripherals to the Evolution is unlikely to be a problem. There are also two FireWire sockets and a copy of Pinnacle Studio SE that will be sure to please video editors. Three PCI slots are vacant for adding extra peripherals.

The cordless Microsoft mouse and keyboard are excellent and have been thoughtfully colour-coded to match the rest of the system. Microsoft Works and Instant CD/DVD software packages are bundled with the system and as is always the case with Evesham PCs, the paperwork provided makes setting up the system very straightforward.

Contact: Evesham 0870 160 9503
www.evesham.com