Systemax Inspire 3137

Systemax continues to churn out good value budget PCs. For just over £700, the 3137 offers a 2500+ Athlon processor that runs at 1.83GHz - this rests on an MSI motherboard that uses an Nforce 2 chipset.

There are two 128MB sticks of memory, as well as Nvidia's Geforce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card. Sysmark performance was perfectly adequate, coming in at 208 overall.

3D performance was as expected for the graphics card, giving 9,317 in 3DMark 2001, 1,924 in 3DMark 2003 and 47 frames per second in Unreal Tournament.

The low price has led to some deficits though. First, there's only one optical drive. Granted, it's a fast CD-RW and DVD combo, but we'd expect a second drive, even with the low price point.

CTX's 17in monitor is a pretty poor choice as well, as the image is quite dull, and it's not the most aesthetically pleasing to look at.

On the plus side, the hard disk is a respectable 60GB, and there's a plentiful array of ports. Two USB ports are on the front of the case and there are four more USB2s at the back.

An Ethernet port is included on the motherboard, as well as serial, parallel and two PS/2 ports.

Included with the PC is Lexmark's X74, which is a low-end multifunction printer, and scanner that is fairly competent.

The Inspire 3137 isn't the best budget system we've seen by Systemax, but if you've only got £700 to spend, you could do a lot worse.

Contact:Simply 0870 297366
www.systemax.co.uk

Specifications:

• AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor
• 256MB memory
• 60GB hard disk
• CD-RW/DVD drive
• Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card
• CTX EZ700F 17in monitor
• Onboard Nvidia six-channel sound
• Lexmark X74 multifunction device
• Windows XP Home Edition