Derrick
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Affordable desktop PC, monitor excluded
This month we look at a budget office PC – a pre-built system we received from the guys at Evetech. What can really be said about an office PC?
Unlike a gaming system, the office PC won’t be put under severe stress during gaming sessions, nor will it deal with the angry gamer’s fist when he or she loses, so no need for a very sturdy case. The chance of documents or even databases taking up a large amount of space is slim to none, especially on a PC in this price range. There’s no need for a graphics card, either: the on-board graphics processor is enough to handle Excel, Word, and even PowerPoint. With a clear idea of what an office PC should feature, we can get to the reviewing bit.
Evetech seems to have all these ideas in mind, and has come up with a streamlined office PC built on a budget. The ‘power’ comes from an AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.9GHz dual-core processor on a low-end BIOSTAR motherboard with NVIDIA GeForce 6100 512MB on-board graphics. Looking past the irony of an AMD/NVIDIA combo, these parts are cheap. Even though they are relatively low end, they offer enough to keep the PC lag free, even with multiple versions of Word, Excel, Access, Pastel, and Internet Explorer open. The PC ships with 2GB of DDR2 800MHz, which sounds enough for an office PC even if it’s running the memory hog that is Windows Vista - but in practice this was not the case. A bit of fiddling in the BIOS showed why the RAM wasn’t keeping up with the system: it was set to DDR2 667MHz at 6-6-6-18, rather than DDR2 800MHz at 5-5-5-15. One small limitation like this can ‘hold up’ the entire system, but it was easy enough to fix. Back to the specifications, however, and we see that Evetech has the rest of the bases covered. A 250GB Seagate hard drive should provide ample space. A Lite-On 24x duallayer DVD writer (in the event of backing up) and a lightweight case with a 400W PSU are well suited to an office PC.
Not much more can be said about this office PC, so let’s look at the price: R2,599 including VAT. Not too bad considering that the PC is more than adequate for office use. Evetech also offers you a one-year, return-to-base warranty to cover the PC, provided that the stickers Evetech put in place to seal the PC are intact.
This month we look at a budget office PC – a pre-built system we received from the guys at Evetech. What can really be said about an office PC?
Unlike a gaming system, the office PC won’t be put under severe stress during gaming sessions, nor will it deal with the angry gamer’s fist when he or she loses, so no need for a very sturdy case. The chance of documents or even databases taking up a large amount of space is slim to none, especially on a PC in this price range. There’s no need for a graphics card, either: the on-board graphics processor is enough to handle Excel, Word, and even PowerPoint. With a clear idea of what an office PC should feature, we can get to the reviewing bit.
Evetech seems to have all these ideas in mind, and has come up with a streamlined office PC built on a budget. The ‘power’ comes from an AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.9GHz dual-core processor on a low-end BIOSTAR motherboard with NVIDIA GeForce 6100 512MB on-board graphics. Looking past the irony of an AMD/NVIDIA combo, these parts are cheap. Even though they are relatively low end, they offer enough to keep the PC lag free, even with multiple versions of Word, Excel, Access, Pastel, and Internet Explorer open. The PC ships with 2GB of DDR2 800MHz, which sounds enough for an office PC even if it’s running the memory hog that is Windows Vista - but in practice this was not the case. A bit of fiddling in the BIOS showed why the RAM wasn’t keeping up with the system: it was set to DDR2 667MHz at 6-6-6-18, rather than DDR2 800MHz at 5-5-5-15. One small limitation like this can ‘hold up’ the entire system, but it was easy enough to fix. Back to the specifications, however, and we see that Evetech has the rest of the bases covered. A 250GB Seagate hard drive should provide ample space. A Lite-On 24x duallayer DVD writer (in the event of backing up) and a lightweight case with a 400W PSU are well suited to an office PC.
Not much more can be said about this office PC, so let’s look at the price: R2,599 including VAT. Not too bad considering that the PC is more than adequate for office use. Evetech also offers you a one-year, return-to-base warranty to cover the PC, provided that the stickers Evetech put in place to seal the PC are intact.