Systemax Inspire 7392

For just over £700, Systemax has supplied a system with an Athlon 2100+ processor, 256MB of memory and an 80GB Samsung hard disk. Not bad so far, especially with a score of 186 in Sysmark under its belt.

Graphics power comes from ATI's new Radeon 9100 chip. It's a revision of the 8500 chip that was used to make last year's 9000.

Disappointingly, it's only AGP 4x, but it does have a 250MHz clock speed and is DirectX 8.1 compatible. A score of 8,774 in 3Dmark is excellent, as is 50.2 frames per second (fps) in Unreal Tournament's Botmatch demo.

The card also comes with DVI and S-Video ports, and costs roughly £100 on its own - great value for money.

It's not all perfect, though. Besides being rather noisy as PC boxes go, the included CTX Executive Flat monitor is a bit of a letdown, although you shouldn't expect anything spectacular for £700.

The onboard surround sound and speaker set are pretty mediocre, but again that's to be expected. These are the system's only real downfalls though, as the optical drives are both high speed and the system comes with a host of decent software.

We were also impressed by the two-port FireWire card and four USB ports at the back. The MSI KT4V-L motherboard also provides an Ethernet connection and S/PDIF optical in and outputs on a bracket.

This blocks one of the three free PCI slots and, due to the way the system has been configured, there isn't a single spare usable PCI slot.

Overall, this is a great value, fast system that just misses out on an award.

Specifications:

• Athlon XP 2100+
• 256MB of DDR memory
• 80GB hard disk
• 16x DVD, 48x CD-RW
• Radeon 9100 graphics
• CTX 17in monitor
• Onboard 5.1 sound
• Smartsuite 9
• 3yr RTB warranty

Contact: Systemax 0870 729 7366
www.systemax.co.uk