Tiny Power 3000-64 VQ

The revitalised Tiny brands itself as 'The low cost PC company'. By that standard the Power 3000-64 VQ is relatively high end, but uses a highly integrated micro ATX MSI 6741 motherboard to provide a decent list of features, while keeping the price low. Inside, the motherboard is home to an Athlon 64 3000+ processor backed up by 512MB of Ram. There's a spare memory slot, allowing for future upgrades along with two free PCI slots.

There's no shortage of ports, with an impressive single USB2, Firewire port and a multi-format memory card reader at the front.

But perhaps a cut too far is the ATI 9200 All-In-Wonder. While its breakout box with remote controls makes it versatile, it's not very powerful. A 3Dmark 2003 score of 1,105 shows it's not really capable of playing the latest games and needs to be run at a low resolution with no advanced features turned on.

Similarly, the 2.1 X1000 speakers are tiny, low-powered and aren't up to the task of music or movies. They really don't do the Realtek 655 six-channel audio justice.The Funai 15in TFT display is surprisingly good, although the bezel is quite wide and the integrated speakers unnecessary. While we were happy to see a 160GB Maxtor hard disk, we were surprised it is an ATA133 unit when there are two unused Serial ATA connectors on the motherboard.

This is a competent PC, but you may want to upgrade some components.

Contact: Tiny.com 01282 777 555
www.tiny.com

Specifications:

• AMD Athlon 64 3200+
• 512MB PC2700
• 160GB hard disk
• NEC ND-1300A DVD writer and Atapi 16x DVD-Rom
• ATI All-In-Wonder 9200
• Funai LM15A 15in TFT
• X1000 2.1 speakers
• Windows XP Home SP1
• Microsoft Works 7, PowerDVD, Pinnacle DVD copying suite
• 12month RTB warranty