Evesham Axis 64 FX-53

If you're shelling out more than £2,000 on a PC, you'd expect to get an impressive line-up of components for your money. A quick look through the specs of the Axis 64 FX-53 confirms that the Evesham does not disappoint on this score, with a line-up of powerful kit under the bonnet.

Built for speed, the processor driving the system is AMD's Athlon 64 FX-53, running at a clock speed of 2.4GHz. The FX series is AMD's fastest range of desktop processors, with the FX-53 king of the hill.

This processing powerhouse is coupled with 1GB of Ram, arranged as a pair of 512MB modules across two of the four dual-channel memory Dimm slots on the Asus SKN8 motherboard. These are ECC-registered memory modules, which will correct flaws in the data being processed by the PC to reduce memory errors. The dual memory configuration should, in theory, also help to eliminate memory bottlenecks while the system is running and further boost the Evesham PC's performance.

Two 160GB Maxtor hard disks occupy two of the five 3.5in drive bays. These can be arranged in a Raid array as a mirrored pair, where data saved on the primary hard disk will be copied onto the second disk, providing handy and automatic backup for your entire system. Alternatively, the two disks may be arranged in a striped Raid array so they will work in tandem, further boosting system performance. The third option is to take the pair of hard disks out of Raid array and use them as two separate hard disks. These drives are connected to the motherboard via a pair of serial ATA (Sata) sockets for faster data transfer.

The Axis put in a very good performance in our benchmark tests, with an overall score of 206 in Sysmark 2004, which was a point faster than Alienware's PC built around Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (see review of Alienware Area 51 Extreme). This PC has both a DVD-R/RW drive and DVD-Rom drive, which occupy two of the four optical drive bays. The front panel of the Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum occupies a third, leaving one free. The Audigy panel features a huge array of ports, sockets and controls including S/PDIF, optical, Midi and Firewire. The card itself supports 7.l-channel audio and is THX certified.

All the drive bays at the front of the system case are tool-free with green plastic catches to release the drives from their bays. The fascia covering the front of the system tower is also removable, so you can slot optical and 3.5in drives in and out of the bay stack with ease.

Meanwhile, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT graphics card with 256MB of dedicated DDR memory sits in the AGP slot. This powered the Axis to a score of 6,807 in 3Dmark03, which is pretty fast, as the Unreal Tournament score of 102 frames per second (fps) confirmed.

Just below the graphics card, three of the five PCI slots are free to house additional cards if you want to add more features to the system.

With so many high-performance components packed into this system, cooling is a prime consideration and Evesham has addressed this by fitting two case fans, one at the front of the system with a dust filter and a larger fan at the rear.

Overall, connectivity is good, with two USB2 ports at the front of the system in addition to the four at the rear. The Asus motherboard features integrated Firewire and there is a single port on the back panel of the system tower.

The Axis has both a VGA and DVI port, in case you want to hook up a second monitor in addition to the excellent 19in Viewsonic LCD flat panel bundled with the system. The monitor is height adjustable, and can be tilted and swivelled through 90 degrees so you can work in portrait mode. A set of 7.1-channel Creative Inspire T7700 speakers are also included.

We can't really knock this PC, as it's built from the best components available and has the performance to match. However, it's a touch pricey and, therefore only really of interest to the power hungry who want the absolute best performance.

Contact: Evesham 08701 609 500
www.evesham.com

Specifications:

• Windows XP Pro
• 2.4GHz Athlon 64 FX-53
• 1GB ECC Ram
• Asus SK8N Nforce 3 Pro motherboard
• 2 160GB hard disks
• DVD+/-RW
• 256MB ATI Radeon 9800XT
• 19in Viewsonic VP191S
• Creative Inspire T7700
• 2yrs on-site, 1yr RTB warranty