What else is there ?
We put great store in peripherals that you will interact with on a daily basis. With that thought in mind, we set about evaluating the other parts of the system.
An overhead view shows the silver theme continuing unabated. Scan choose Chieftec's wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard has a firm typing action, a number of shortcuts, and responds like a corded, standard keyboard. Its attractiveness adds to its appeal, we feel. The same cannot be levied at the mouse. All too often it would seem to skip over to an opposite portion of screen. Movement, too, was a little hit and miss. General Windows navigation wasn't as smooth as we'd imagined, so one can imagine the kind of accuracy and consistency it would display in a fast-moving game. It's a case of form over function, sadly.
System integrators have caught on to the fact that not only are TFTs sexy, light and save oodles of space, they're now beginning to match the colour definition and saturation shown by high-end CRTs. Scan equip this system with Sony's S51R 15" LCD display. The display was bright, vibrant and full of colour. However, the 0.297 mm pixel size, 250 cd/m luminance and 300:1 contrast ratio made colours seems a little washed. This 1024x768 display is near the bottom of Sony's range, so its detractions are quite understandable. There's no height adjustment, but the display does pivot well.
Even though we have made mention of some of its weaker points, a DVI connection would have balanced out its deficiencies somewhat. The above picture shows the concealed area for the HD15 interface and 3-pin power cable. No DVI here, folks. We wonder if the money would have been better spent on a classy 19" flat-faced CRT. The highly customisable nature of Scan's options allows you to choose almost any display. Its small footprint and removable stand will make it appeal to a number of potential buyers who value aesthetics and space, though. A couple of onlookers remarked at how crisp the screen appeared, driven by the FX 5200 ULTRA via HD15. That, I informed them, is what comes from viewing five-year-old substandard monitors day after day.
Creative's capable 5100 5.1 speakers effortlessly output the sound produced by NVIDIA's APU. The home PC is becoming the centre of many a person's multimedia experience (don't you just love soundbites ?). The 5100s, although quite small in stature, manage to push out bass and treble lines with remarkable precision and clarity for budget speakers. Yours truly is a hi-fi audiophile, and was suitably impressed with Scan's choice of speaker package.
Software
One of the main benefits associated with pre-configured systems is just that. They've usually have an operating system and a clutch of software pre-installed. All the user has to do is depress the power button and wait for the O.S to load. It's then time to investigate just what a vendor has included in the price, software-wise. This SCAN PC arrived with a perfectly configured installation of Windows XP Home. All relevant device drivers and software was loaded correctly. SCAN included an original, sealed Windows XP Home CD with certificate, motherboard drivers, graphics card drivers, WinCinema (presumably from the Gainward card's VIVO operations), PowerDVD 4.0, and Ahead Nero eXpress burning software. Various manuals are provided to cross-reference any simple problems. There's actually very little for the customer to do. Simply plug in the power cable, speakers, TFT, and infrared keyboard plus mouse receiver; then watch it boot into Windows and welcome you with the annoying XP theme.
SCAN employ what appears to be a reference AMD cooler. Its high RPM 60mm fan, coupled with a number of 80mm fans at full whir, ensure that this will never be the quietest of systems. However, it's safe to say that the noise profile isn't particularly annoying. The machine's sound is something more akin to a gentle whoosh (highly articulate here) than a high-pitched scream. The Creative speakers, used at a reasonably modest level, would most likely drown out the base unit's sound.
We've covered the hardware and software elements of the system. We'll now subject it to our usual benchmark suite. This should give us a better idea of how it stacks up against the numerous motherboard, CPU and graphics card combinations that we've benchmarked before.
