Dell Studio XPS 8300

Not everyone wants their PC to look like a looming black obelisk. Although Dell's Studio XPS 8300 won't be to everyone's taste, it's compact, unassuming and reasonably quiet. It's only when we opened it up that we realised how much has been sacrificed to keep the PC small. The plain metal interior looks cheap, everything is cramped and cable routing is haphazard.

There are spare drive bays for one 5 1/4in drive and two 3 1/2in disks, but there are only two spare SATA connectors. The other two are occupied by a DVD drive and 1TB hard disk, and none supports the faster SATA III standard. The motherboard's backplate provides just four USB ports, an eSATA port, six 3.5mm stereo sockets for analogue surround sound and an optical S/PDIF output. Another four USB ports and a memory card reader are built into the top and front panels. Dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi is integrated onto the motherboard.

The PC has 8GB of RAM in two 4GB sticks, which leaves space for another two modules. There are also two PCI-E x1 slots and one PCI-E x16 slot, but all of them are occupied. The x16 slot is taken up by the graphics card, a 1GB ATI Radeon 5770, while the two PCI-E x1 slots are occupied by a USB3 card that provides a solitary port on the back panel and a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1200 TV tuner for viewing and recording digital TV. A media centre remote control is also supplied.
This PC only comes with a 21.5in monitor, though, so you'll have to be reasonably close to watch. It looked a little dull in side-by-side comparisons with other displays, but it was evenly lit and colours looked natural. The supplied mouse is generic but comfortable, while the keyboard lends itself to swift and efficient typing.


With a score of 97 in our benchmarks, the Studio XPS 8300 fails to match the performance of other i5-2500K PCs we've tested. Although Dell has used an unlocked processor, it hasn't been overclocked and there aren't any overclocking options in the UEFI (BIOS) either, so you can't do it yourself. With a graphics card that managed 24.2fps in Crysis when similarly priced PCs are getting scores of over 60fps, there's nothing to impress us here. This is still a powerful PC that can run Call of Duty 4 with a snappy frame rate of 48.6fps, but you can do much better for your money.
Even though it's a little cheaper than most of the i5-2500K PCs we've seen, we were distinctly unimpressed by the 8300's cluttered interior and poor test scores, and we only got the price down to less than £1,000 by settling for a DVD drive, rather than Blu-ray. Even Dell's one-year collect and return warranty is outshone by some of its rivals. We prefer the Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire.

Dell Inspiron One 2205

Just like desktop PCs, you can get All-in-Ones designed to suit a wide variety of purposes and prices. Dell's Inspiron One is aimed at more budget-conscious users, but you still get a Full HD touchscreen display, dedicated graphics processor and a decent wireless mouse and keyboard. There's even a TV tuner.

The processor isn't very powerful - it's only an Athlon II X2 250e, and produced an overall score of just 36 in our benchmark tests. This is partly due to its very limited multi-processing capabilities, which let it down in the multi-tasking and video encoding tests. However, if your main interests are browsing the web, watching movies, playing the odd casual game and writing documents, there's nothing you'll need a more powerful PC for.
The 2205 has 4GB of memory, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 to go with it. Its hard disk is only a 500GB model, although that should be plenty for most people. If you want more, you'll need external storage, so you'll be pleased to find six USB ports - two at the front right of the display, and four in a fairly accessible location at the back of the PC.

You'll have to use one of the ports to connect the adaptor for the supplied wireless mouse and keyboard. These are remarkably good - the keyboard sounds a little rattly, but has a supportive wrist rest, a spacious layout and lends itself to rapid typing. The ambidextrous mouse is similarly comfortable to use.

The right-hand side of the PC also has a memory card reader and a pair of 3.5mm audio ports - one for a mic, and another for either headphones or an external speaker. There's another 3.5mm port at the back which can be configured to connect either a set of external stereo speakers or a dedicated subwoofer to work alongside the integrated stereo speakers build into the computer's chassis. It's a good idea, as the built-in speakers are almost entirely lacking in bass; however, they're also rather underpowered, so could easily be overwhelmed by a separate bass speaker. A dedicated set of speakers is a better idea, as the integrated ones are fine for program sounds or watching the odd YouTube video, but we wouldn't rely on them for much more than that.
The touchscreen display itself looks rather good, with even backlighting and vivid natural colours as well as decent contrast in dark areas. It looks a little gritty on light windows, but we were pleased to find that the glossy finish isn't too reflective. Dell's touch-friendly toolbar also feels friendlier and more natural to use than the standard Microsoft Touch Pack interface supplied with most touchscreen systems, although a keyboard and mouse are still a better choice.

Dell has put together a functional range of features in an attractive PC. The Acer Aspire Z3731 is cheaper, but doesn't have the build quality to match Dell's PC.

Dell Inspiron One 2320

Dell's Inspiron One 2320 is surprisingly powerful for an all-in-one PC, with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2400S processor alongside 6GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk, making it a credible rival for many mid-priced desktop systems. If you buy directly from Dell, it costs a rather reasonable £799, although we've seen exactly the same system on sale from various high street retailers for around £900, so you'll want to make sure that you get the best price.

We've seen several impressive all-in-one PCs this year, the most notable of which is the Asus ET2410INTS. The Inspiron One's 22.5in touchscreen display is conspicuously smaller than the similarly priced Asus's screen, and it doesn't have a dedicated graphics card, but it's otherwise similarly specified. The Inspiron performed well in our benchmark tests, with an overall score of 74, which shows it has more than enough power to run any desktop or multimedia application. The extra memory gives you plenty of scope for more intensive tasks such as batch image manipulation and video effects rendering.

Even if you ignore its relatively small size, Dell's 1,920x1,080 integrated touchscreen display is something of a disappointment, with a greyish-blue cast on pale colours and slightly uneven backlighting that leads to light bleed around the screen's edge. Films look good on the glossy screen, but the display is prone to reflections. We're also not particularly enamoured of the glossy, round-edged chassis. It looks a bit like a budget TV, but at least it feels fairly well made and has a clear plastic stand that makes it easy to adjust the PC's height and angle.
The Inspiron relies on the Core i5-2400S processor's integrated graphics, which means that you won't be able to play modern 3D titles at even low resolutions, although old games and less demanding 2D titles such as adventure games won't present too much of a challenge. The PC is obviously built for entertainment: there are HDMI, VGA and composite video inputs, so you can use the display instead of a TV for connecting games consoles. There's also a VGA output so you can plug in a second display or a projector. The PC has a built-in Blu-ray player as well as a digital TV tuner. Dell has provided CyberLink PowerDVD 9.5 to handle Blu-ray discs, while Windows Media Center - along with the supplied remote control - makes it remarkably easy to browse through TV channels and media files.

The supplied wireless mouse and keyboard work well enough; the keyboard's flat, widely-spaced keys are rather unresponsive, but their layout doesn't interfere with swift typing, while the ambidextrous mouse is comfortable but entirely unremarkable. You'll have to expend a USB port to connect the wireless adaptor for the keyboard and mouse set, but this isn't a great loss, as there are plenty more: two at the front, and four more at the back. There's an SD card reader, too, but no eSATA or USB3 ports. You can connect the PC to your network via either the Gigabit Ethernet port at the back or the built-in dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi.

This is a great little all-in-one, even though our tests found that it uses a remarkably high 11W when in sleep mode. However, it's not quite as well-rounded as the Asus ET2410INTS, which has a bigger, better display, dedicated graphics chipset and costs just £70 more.

Dell XPS One 27

The Apple iMac has consistently been the most desirable and powerful all-in-one computer for years, but the Dell XPS One 27 could finally be a worthy contender. On Dell's website this is sold as simply the XPS One 27, though the model number is actually 2710.
Its highlight is the gorgeous 27in panel, framed in edge-to-edge glass, which has a huge resolution of 2,560x1,440. It looks fantastic and, on a 27in screen, it's hard to settle for anything less, as this gives you plenty of space to have multiple windows open simultaneously, or edit photos in fine detail. A 1080p (1,920x1,080) resolution on the same-size screen feels positively primeval by comparison. We found that the screen's glossy finish made it quite reflective, but this was a minor complaint in the face of such crystal clear precision.

This bore out in our solid colour image tests. Reds, blues and greens were extremely bright and vibrant, and blacks and whites were deep and true. We did notice a very slight shadow in the bottom right hand corner of the screen as well as all the way across the bottom of the screen, but you wouldn’t really notice this on a day-to-day basis and the rest of the screen was near perfect. Its contrast and brightness levels were similarly excellent, with our high contrast test photos showing plenty of detail in both the light and dark areas of each image.
Our review sample also came with a touchscreen, but this optional extra will set you back an extra £300, over the standard model. This makes the Dell XPS One 27 feel rather expensive, as the hardware underneath is exactly the same regardless of whether you opt for a touchscreen or not.
Whether or not you need the touchscreen is up to you. As Windows 8 now fully supports touch and has a brand-new touchscreen interface, you may find it more useful. In fact, for the new Start Screen apps, a touchscreen is really useful and you'll find yourself using it a lot.


The extra £300 also gets you an articulating stand, so you can tilt the screen up to 45 degrees backwards, making it even easier to use on a desk. At this angle, we found it more comfortable to use standing up, making touch controls by far the most natural way to interact with the PC. That said, a touchscreen's not essential and the base model, at £1,399 including VAT, is excellent value, so you may want to save the money.


We found the bundled wireless keyboard and mouse were also very comfortable and easy to use, as all the Chiclet-style keys had plenty of bounce and tactile feedback, and the mouse was just the right size for our hands.

We have no qualms over the main specifications. Our review sample came with the excellent quad-core 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-3770S processor, which uses Hyper-Threading to add four more virtual cores. With an overall score of 94 it makes the XPS One 27 more than capable of handling multiple programs at once as well as those that require multi-threading.
Such a high resolution screen will also take its toll on the XPS One 27’s ability to play games, and even 8GB of RAM and a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card failed to produce 15fps in our Dirt Showdown and Crysis 2 tests on Ultra Quality settings at both its native resolution and at 1,920x1,080. It fared much better in the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test, which produced 52.6fps on High Quality settings at a resolution of 1,280x720.
This shows that tailoring the graphics settings for each game proved a much more fruitful exercise. We managed a much more playable 20.1fps in Crysis 2 on High settings and 29.4fps in Dirt Showdown on Medium settings at its native resolution, which means it’s still possible to have a competent gaming experience on the XPS One 27 as long as you’re not too fussy about graphical fidelity.


For storage there's a 2TB hard disk, which provides plenty of storage for even the most avid of media collectors. Then there's a 32GB SSD, which acts as a cache, improving boot times and load times of your most commonly-used applications. It certainly helps and Windows 8 boots extremely quickly when used with an SSD.
The Dell XPS One 27 also comes with a Blu-ray Combo drive embedded into the right hand side of the chassis, so you can easily watch films. It also has a multi-format card reader, two USB3 ports and separate headphone and microphone jacks on the left. Around the back are another four USB3 ports, an HDMI input for connecting up your DVD player or games console, an HDMI output for connecting your PC to your TV or another display, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and an S/PDIF port that allows you to send digital audio to external speakers. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the XPS One 27’s integrated speakers, as these had plenty of volume and excellent bass. PC.
The Dell XPS One 27 is an excellent all-in-one PC, and can certainly hold its own against Apple’s iMac. The touchscreen model is a little expensive for our liking, but the non-touch Core i7 model will get you one of the best all-in-ones money can buy.

Dell Alienware X51

The X51 is a compact gaming PC from Dell's premium Alienware brand. It's about the same size as an Xbox Elite, and has a selection of clever features.
The slim case is fairly understated as far as Alienware designs go, with just a glowing alien head and LED-lit clear side panels. The gloss front panel contrasts nicely with the matte sides, and the case is designed to be stood upright or on its side - you can swivel the alien head to match a horizontal aspect.

The front of the case gives you the standard twin USB and headphone and microphone ports, but round the back things are more interesting; the X51 is geared up to plug into your home cinema system as well as a standard PC monitor, keyboard and mouse. To this end there are HDMI and optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs, so you're covered for most HDTVs and surround sound systems, as well as twin DVI outputs on the graphics card and 7.1 analogue outputs to connect to PC speaker sets. You also get built in gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n wireless networking.
There are four main models of X51. The base £649 version has a dual-core Intel Core i3-2120 processor, 4GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 545 graphics card, the £749 model above has an upgrade to a quad-core Core i5-2320, while the top two models have faster GeForce GTX 555 graphics cards, 8GB RAM and quad-core Core i5-2320 and Core i7-2600 chips for £799 and £899 respectively.

We have the £799 model, which we feel is the sweetspot. Its 3GHz i5-2320 processor is quick enough for even intensive 2D tasks, as shown by an overall score of 97 in our benchmarks. The X51's Nvidia GTX 555 graphics card is an OEM model which you can't buy separately. It's slightly less well-specified than a GeForce GTX 560Ti, with 288 CUDA cores compared to 384 and a 1.5GHz rather than 1.6GHz core clock speed.
The X51 showed reasonable performance in our game tests. 40fps in Dirt 3 at 1,920 x 1,080 and Ultra detail gives you smooth gameplay, but the PC didn’t cope so well with our intensive Crysis 2 test, managing just 16.4fps at 1,920 x 1,080 and Ultra detail. We had to turn Crysis 2 down to "Very High" settings, losing all the fancy tessellation effects, to get a smooth 34.1fps.

Fortunately, despite its small dimensions, the PC is fairly easy to upgrade. The side panel slides off and gives you access to the twin memory slots, and to change the graphics card you just need to remove a couple of screws and slide the card out of a metal tray. The X51 has two six-pin PCI Express plugs, and we had no problems fitting a far more powerful AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics card, which led to a large improvement in our graphics benchmark scores. The 1TB hard disk is also easy to get at, but as there's only room for one disk you'll need to replace the old one if you upgrade.
The X51's main problem is price. You could build a PC around a Shuttle SH67H3 barebones with an Intel Core i5-2320 processor, 8GB RAM, a 1TB hard disk and an AMD Radeon HD 7770 graphics card, which will give you similar performance to the X51 in a chassis almost as compact for around £620. The Alienware X51 is a neat design and would make a great living room PC for some gaming - we just wish its 3D performance was more impressive.

Dell XPS 27

From budget systems designed for the living room to serious graphic design workstations, all-in-one PCs are increasingly popular. Apple's powerful iMacs remain top of the heap in terms of style and cachet, but there are plenty of challengers lining up to take them on. The Dell XPS 27, also known as the 2720 in its business version, is Dell's latest attempt to steal Apple's all-in-one PC crown, with its stunning 27in IPS touchscreen display and impressively high-resolution of 2,560x1,440.

It's available in two versions, the cheapest of which is priced from £1,449 and has a slower processor, less RAM and a smaller hard disk. We reviewed the more expensive version, which is available from £1,799. That's only a bit cheaper than a Core i7-based iMac, but the XPS 27 is also the first all-in-one PC we've seen with a Intel’s Haswell processors.
PERFORMANCE
The review system came with a 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-4770S processor, a massive 16GB of memory and a 2TB hard disk. It also has a 32GB mSATA SSD drive that's used as a disk cache to provide faster boot speeds and access times. Boot times are a slower than systems that boot from an SSD, though, with the PC taking 17 seconds to reach the Start screen from a cold boot.
The PC produced an overall score of 103 in our benchmark tests. That's pretty good, but it didn’t perform as well as the Ivy Bridge-based 2013 iMac. Even so, this an exceptionally quick Windows-based all-in-one. Plus, the XPS 27 is at least fairly well equipped 3D gaming, unlike many all-in-one PCs. Thanks to its 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics processor. It won’t run all the latest games at maximum quality, but most titles are playable and still look good at reduced settings.
The XPS 27 produced an average frame rate of 19fps in our Dirt Showdown benchmark test at a resolution of 1,920x1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and graphics quality set to Ultra. That’s a pass, but only just, and the frame rate’s too low for smooth play. However, the frame rate increased to a smooth, playable frame rate of 43.6fps at 1,920x1,080 when we slightly reduced the graphics quality to High. Reducing the resolution to 1,280x720 and graphics quality to High produced an even smoother average frame rate of 65fps.
If you want to play at the display's native resolution of 2,560x1,440, you'll get a largely playable frame rate of 28.8fps at High quality. Crysis 2 is, as ever, a more challenging prospect. Our standard test at Ultra quality and 1,920x1,080 resolution produced a frame rate of 18.2fps, only just passing the test. Reducing the quality to Very High, however, produced a smooth and playable 38.9fps.
DISPLAY
The 27in IPS display is the most striking feature of the PC. It's glossy, it looks stunning and we weren’t irritated by reflections, which is something that can happen with glossy screens. We measured a fantastic contrast ratio of 1114:1, and you can see lots of fine detail in even the most shadowy images. It did brilliantly in our colour gamut coverage test, too, with a 99.9 per cent sRGB gamut coverage rating.
The ten-point touchscreen is highly responsive, although we're not sure how many people are likely to sit within touching distance of such an enormous screen. You can tilt the display a long way back, making it easier to display images and interact with apps when showing content to a group, but we were surprised to find that it doesn't fold flat.
You can even connect additional monitors or projectors to the PC thanks to its HDMI and Lightning outputs. It also has an HDMI input so you can connect an external video source such as a console or cable box. You can change the displays settings with a touchscreen panel at the lower right of the display.


PORTS AND INSIDE
The integrated speaker is positioned at the base of the display. It's louder than most, and even has a bit of bass to it, but it has a tendency to boom and produce slightly harsh treble. Nonetheless, you could comfortably use it listen to music as long as you’re not on a quest for perfect hi-fi quality.
There are also 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports at the right-hand side of the display, along with an SDXC card reader and two USB3 ports. At the back of the PC are another four USB3 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port. At the right-hand side is a Blu-ray drive. The PC's webcam is positioned at the very top of the display, and there's an endearing manual lens cover that you can slide across if your inner paranoia wants to be sure of privacy. This is a great idea, and we hope it catches on.


Although the system looks like a sealed unit, you only have to remove a couple of screws at the bottom to slide the back panel off. Inside, metal plates protect the various components and expansion slots. It has a pair of laptop memory slots that are easy to access; the hard disk is buried deeper behind the plates. Access panels for other components aren't even labelled. Dell notes that you may void your warranty by making your own upgrades.


The XPS One has a built-in receiver for supplied wireless mouse and keyboard, so you won’t lose a USB port to wireless convenience. The mouse could be more comfortable and drags a little when you use it on most surfaces, but it’s usable and by no means the worst we’ve used. The compact keyboard proved to be fast and accurate to touch-type on. It even has a full numeric keypad.
The combination of a HDMI input, Blu-ray drive, massive resolution, brilliant display quality and overall performance make this all-in-one a great buy if you need a powerful system. It’s especially suited to video- and photo-editing, and is large enough for watching Blu-ray movies and catch-up TV from a distance. The Dell XPS 27 is a great alternative to an iMac. It isn’t cheap, but if you need a Windows all-in-one that can do almost anything, this PC is the Ultimate.
EXPERT EXTRA: Better than an iMac?
[i]Apple has yet to release an iMac with an Intel Haswell processor, which is an immediate point in favour of Dell's system. Of all the Windows-based all-in-one PCs we’ve reviewed, this is the best alternative to the iMac.
Like the iMac, it’s beautifully built and has a stunning 2,560x1,440 27in IPS display with fantastic image quality. It also has a dedicated graphics processor, the Nvidia GeForce GT 750M. It’s powerful enough to play the latest 3D games, but is also great for working with video- and photo-editing software.
Apple’s proprietary Fusion hard disk technology combines solid state and mechanical drive technology. It caches your vital applications with the faster SSD to improve disk speed. The XPS 27 uses a 32GB mSATA cache in a similar fashion to improve responsiveness.
It also has a number of features not seen on any current iMac, including a touchscreen display, a Blu-ray drive and a HDMI input. Between them, these last two features mean you can effectively use it instead of a TV to watch movies and connect a cable box or games console.
This all-in-one might cost about the same as an iMac, but whether you’re watching movies or editing images, the Dell XPS 27 is a fantastic PC and excellent alternative to an iMac.

Dell XPS 18

There's recently been a rush to release the perfect hybrid Windows all-in-one/tablet PC, but the Dell XPS 18 is one of the most elegant we've seen so far. Most of its rivals have been some combination of expensive, larger than you'd expect or packed with cool-looking but slightly over-complicated design features. Dell, however, has taken the simple option: an oversized Windows 8 tablet PC that comes with a dock.

The dock doesn't provide any extra features, such additional ports or a disc drive. Instead, it's just a nicely made adjustable metal stand which can support and smoothly tilt your tablet through a range of angles from completely vertical to almost horizontal. The tablet also has a magnetic rear so it will snap into place for extra security.


DISPLAY
The touchscreen display has a Full HD 1,920x1,080 resolution and its outstanding contrast ratio of 1,194:1 showed plenty of detail in even our darkest images. Its sRGB colour gamut coverage was somewhat less impressive at 83.1 per cent. This is to be expected from a WVA panel, though, which typically have less accurate colours than screens with IPS panels. Instead, its main speciality is its wide viewing angles, which were very impressive indeed. We didn’t see any shift in contrast even when we were looking at it side on and its glossy finish made our photos and video look very rich and vivid.
Colours looked even as well without any particular tints or colour casts visible on even our palest test screens. By default the display switches between portrait and landscape mode as an accelerometer tells it which way up the tablet is, although you can lock it if you want to. Positioning it vertically can be helpful for viewing long documents or un-rotated photos, but it's obvious that the XPS 18 is primarily meant to be used in landscape mode.
PORTABLE-ISH
Measuring 282x462x13mm and weighing 2.31kg, it's much larger and heavy than your average portable tablet but not so large as to be completely impractical to move around. It's best suited to being used on the dining room table or on your lap in front of the TV. Laying it flat makes it easy to use for a variety of multi-user Windows games and apps, such as the pre-installed air-hockey game. A pair of feet pulls out from the rear so you can prop it up even without the stand. We wouldn't recommend slinging it in a bag to carry to work and back, and it's definitely too large to use comfortably on the train.


You won’t be able to stray too far from the mains, though, as the integrated battery lasted just 4h 3m in our light use test. This involved setting the screen set to half brightness and disabling the Wi-Fi, so it will drain even faster if you’re surfing the web with the screen on its maximum brightness setting. It lasted around the same when we played a video on it under the same conditions as well. This isn't great compared to a normal tablet, but it's plenty for moving the PC around the house for occasional use, such as for showing off photos in the living room or looking up recipes in the kitchen.


The XPS 18 has two USB ports and a 3.5mm headset port on the left-hand side, but that's it in terms of connectivity. There's a card reader recessed behind a flap on the left side of the PC, which support SDXC, Memory Stick PRO and xD among other formats. It's handy if you want to conveniently access photos shot on a digital camera. There's no Ethernet port, but the PC supports 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. The PC has a 500GB hard disk for internal storage, but there’s also a 32GB SSD to cache vital applications to improve disk speed and responsiveness when resuming from sleep mode or turning it on from a cold boot.
A pair of buttons on the left-hand side control volume, while the power switch is on the right. A Windows button is positioned below the centre of the sensitive ten-point touchscreen. Little integrated speakers are positioned on the left and right sides, but you'll want to connect headphones or a pair of external speakers if you want to listen to music. The integrated ones are fine for system sounds or listening to spoken word content but are almost unbearably tinny and entirely lacking in bass when it comes to music.

SPECIFICATIONS
The XPS 18 comes in a range of specifications, but our review sample had a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3337U processor and 8GB of RAM. These are the same components that power most Core i5 Ultrabook laptops, and its overall score of 43 is just a few points behind what we’d normally expect to see from this type of processor. It's not intended for processor-intensive tasks, but if your computer use revolves around web browsing, listening to music, watching videos and the odd bit of document editing, it's certainly up to the job. It'll struggle if you want to do serious photo editing, but it’s still capable enough for the odd touch-up.
The processor's on-chip Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU isn't suited to 3D gaming at any reasonable quality, either. It only just scraped 19.2fps in the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test with the quality set to High at a 1,280x720 resolution, so you’ll need to keep the settings very low to play 3D games at a reasonable speed. It’s perfectly good enough for 2D Flash games and simple touch-based titles from the Windows 8 Store, though, so you should still be able to have some fun with it.


The system comes with a Dell-badged Logitech Bluetooth mouse and keyboard set. Although both are fairly slim, the Chiclet-style keyboard has a full numeric keypad and well-spaced keys which make accurate touch-typing easy once you've become accustomed to the shallow keys. The slightly blocky-looking mouse is also comfortable to use.
The Dell XPS 18 is pleasant to use and looks great. Its lack of ports won't be for everyone, but at just under £700, this portable PC is one of the cheapest Core i5 all-in-ones around, winning it a Budget Buy award.

Chillblast Fusion Vantage

We expect chillblast to press every last bit of power into its PCs, and The Fusion Vantage has an i5-3570K processor that’s been overclocked to 4.8GHz, producing an overall score of 155 in our benchmark tests. That’s higher than the scores we’ve seen from some overclocked Ivy Bridge Core i7 systems.

It also has a powerful GPU, the AMD Radeon HD 7950 with 3GB of memory. It’s responsible for the PC’s phenomenal gaming performance, which gave us frame rates of 88fps in Dirt3 and 37fps in Crysis 2, both at the games’ highest quality settings. You won’t need to upgrade for a very long time indeed. It’s worth noting, though, that the graphics card makes an audible and somewhat annoying whine when you’re gaming.
The motherboard is an Asus P8Z77-V LX, and it has a reasonable selection of expansion slots, although it’s slightly imbalanced. It has three PCI slots, all of which are vacant, but only two PCI-E x1 slots, and one of those is blocked by the graphics card. There’s also a second PCI-E x16 slot, but it actually runs at x4. The PC also comes with a 700W power supply. It’s Chillblast’s own-brand PSU rather than a more prestigious name, but it should pack enough power to fuel any upgrades you desire. Also impressive are the four 4GB memory modules that provide 16GB of 1,600MHz RAM, more than enough for video- or photo-editing.


The motherboard has six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3 and are connected to the hard disks. The PC’s main system drive is a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD, which provides blistering boot speeds and plenty of room for applications. For data storage and less critical applications, there’s also a massive 2TB HDD. It also has two free 31/2in bays and three free 51/4in bays, so you can add plenty of extra storage.

Sadly, we’re not great fans of the case. It’s solidly constructed without being inconveniently heavy and has a well finished interior, but it doesn’t have adequate soundproofing, which makes it one of the noisier PCs we’ve seen from Chillblast. Even so, the PC isn’t distactingly loud when it’s running (annoying noises from the GPU fan notwithstanding), largely thanks to some fairly quiet case fans and a discrete Akasa CPU cooler. The wide vent grilles in the side panel and at the bottom of the case mean there’s little to stop fluff and dust getting in.

In terms of ports, the PC has a couple of USB ports at the front and six at the rear. Two of the latter are USB3. There’s also a PS/2 port at the back, as well as the usual Gigabit Ethernet and audio ports. For sound output, there’s an optical S/PDIF port and three 3.5mm stereo ports for analogue surround sound. The front panel has 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports.


The mouse and keyboard are a Logitech wireless MK260 set and the monitor is a 23.6in Asus VS247H monitor. It’s a good choice, and has an HDMI, VGA and DVI inputs.
This is a brilliant system, packing in a Blu-ray re-writer, 16GB of memory, an large SSD and an extremely good graphics card. Gamers might prefer the additional graphics power of Wired2Fire’s Diablo GTX, but this is the best all-round PC you can get for a grand. It’s a true Best Buy.

Chillblast Fusion Accelerate

Although the other Windows 8 PCs we've seen so far have been solid performance-orientated models, Chillblast has tried something a bit different with the Fusion Accelerate - it's a quiet PC with an Iiyama touchscreen.
While Windows 7 wasn’t easy to navigate with a touchscreen, Windows 8 is designed with touch interfaces very much in mind. The new Start screen consists of chunky, finger-friendly icons, and many of the new apps are optimised for touch. The Fusion Accelerate's Iiyama ProLite T2451MTS screen supports multi-touch gestures and it works brilliantly with some of Windows 8's built-in apps. We particularly liked flicking through news articles in the full-screen News app, scrolling side-to-side as if we were turning pages in a glossy magazine.

The touchscreen also works well in the Maps application thanks to pinch-to-zoom and we had fun with touchscreen games such as pinball and managed some casual web surfing with the onscreen keyboard. However, instead of responding to touch like the capacitive touchscreens of mobile phones and tablets, the T2451MTS's system works with optical sensors around the edge of the panel. This means you need a rather thick bezel, which makes Windows 8's touch gestures, which mainly involve swiping in from the edge of the screen, difficult to do. We found we mainly used the mouse to launch and close programs, and switched to the touchscreen once we were in one of Windows 8's touch-optimised apps.
The monitor has a glossy finish and that helps colours look pleasingly punchy, but you'll have to look out for the usual problems with reflections from overhead lighting. Our colorimeter reported the screen's colour balance as almost perfect out of the box, and we managed to get it exact with a couple of minor tweaks. After calibration, the colorimeter reported the screen as coming within 98% of the sRGB standard, which is what we've come to expect from a quality TN monitor. We did notice some light leakage at the bottom of the screen, which made blacks right at the bottom of the panel look slightly grey. If you’d rather not have a touchscreen, Chillblast will supply the Fusion Accelerate with an Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS 23in monitor for £949 including VAT. The X2377HDS has an IPS panel, and our calibration tests showed it to have similarly high colour accuracy to the touchscreen, but without any light leaking in at the bottom.


The Fusion Accelerate has a matte black Cooler Master case and it feels very well made. There are USB2 and USB3 ports at the front, alongside an SD card reader. The optical drive is hidden behind a magnetic door, and there's sound-insulating foam behind the door and the PC's side panel. The foam, the quiet processor cooler and the rear exhaust fan make this an extremely quiet PC.
It's also fairly power-efficient, only drawing 55W when idle. Much of this is down to the PC's processor; instead of the monstrous overclocked Intel Core i5-3570K chips we're used to seeing, Chillblast has fitted a relatively low-powered Core i5-3450 running at just 3.1GHz. This led to an overall score of 87 in our benchmarks. That’s fine for desktop applications, but far behind the fastest PCs in intensive tasks.
The PC's Radeon HD 7850 graphics card is a fine mid-range model and could run our Crysis 2 Ultra detail benchmark at a just-smooth 29.9fps. We normally test graphics cards with Dirt 3, but the game wouldn’t run under Windows 8; instead, we upgraded to the newer and far more challenging Dirt Showdown. Even in this test, which we ran at 1,920x1,080 with Ultra detail and 4x anti-aliasing, the PC managed a smooth 38.5fps, showing modern games aren’t a problem.

The inside of the PC is extremely tidy, with most cables routed behind the motherboard tray and out of sight. Four spare 3 1/2in drive bays and two spare 5 1/4in bays should be enough for most upgrade needs, although there’s only one SATA2 port free; the other two SATA2 ports are taken up by the PC's Blu-ray reader/DVD rewriter and its 1TB hard disk, and the motherboard's single SATA3 port is taken up by the SSD boot drive.
This is the PC's main problem; it has a microATX motherboard which cuts down on the expansion options available. There's just a single PCI and one PCI Express x1 slot and we wouldn’t be too keen on using the PCI Express x1 slot due to its proximity to the graphics card's fan.
We're impressed that Chillblast has taken the time to produce a PC that aims to take full advantage of Windows 8's capabilities. It's also quiet and quick in games, but it loses out to some of the other Windows 8 PCs we've seen in terms of desktop performance and expandability, such as the Palicomp Alpha Blade. Nonetheless, if you’re keen for a competent desktop PC with the added fun of a touchscreen, it’s a good buy.

Chillblast Fusion Blaze

The Fusion Blaze from Chillblast is a powerful and well-built Windows 8 system. At £800, it occupies the middle ground between high performance and realistic pricing for a family PC. Chillblast has equipped it accordingly, with more modest components than you'd find in a full-on enthusiast PC. The Intel Core i5-3570K processor is the same powerful CPU that you'll find in many of our favourite performance systems. It has a significant overclock, too, bringing it up to a speed of 4.5GHz from the stock 3.4GHz. This helped the PC to an excellent overall score of 144 in our application benchmarks.

The graphics card is an overclocked 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 OC from Palit. The GTX 660 is an unassuming-looking card which isn’t as powerful as the GTX 660 Ti version, but it's still no slouch; we saw a smooth 30fps in Crysis 2 at 1,920x1,080 and Ultra detail, demonstrating that it's easily able to handle all the latest 3D games. The card has two DVI ports, an HDMI port and DisplayPort, and you can connect monitors to all three for triple-screen gaming; you'll have to drop the resolution and detail levels, though.
The PC's 700W power supply is generic rather than branded, but should nonetheless pack enough power to support significant upgrades. There's certainly plenty of scope to do so. The Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard is a budget model, but it's an ATX motherboard with three PCI slots and two PCI-E x1 slots - one of which is blocked by the graphics card's cooler. There are also two PCI-E x16 slots, but the bottom slot only runs at x4 speed.


There are six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3. There are three free SATA2 ports and one free SATA3 port. The PC has a Blu-ray drive and a 2TB hard disk. We were surprised to find that the Fusion Blaze – unlike most similarly priced systems - doesn’t have an SSD. Although this means that its boot speeds aren’t as fast as computers with a solid state system drive, Windows 8’s own improvements to boot times still make it feel fast. You also won’t benefit from the quicker read/write speeds of an SSD, but the 2TB hard disk gives you plenty of room to install software and means that you won’t have to juggle with the install locations of your favourite games and applications, as you do with small SSDs. If you want to upgrade later, there's lots of room for more drives, with two free 5 1/4in bays, one external 3 1/2in bay and five unused internal 3 1/2in bays. There are two vacant memory slots on the board, too, with the others each holding a 1,333MHz 4GB memory module.
At the front of the case are two USB ports - one USB3 and one USB2, plus 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. At the back are two more USB3 ports and four USB2 ports, as well as a PS/2 port for a keyboard or mouse. There are three 3.5mm stereo ports for 5.1 analogue surround sound, as well as an optical S/PDIF output and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The case itself is sturdy and well made, although not all the air vents have fine mesh covers to keep dust out. The system is remarkably quiet, thanks to high-quality processor and case fans.


The supplied Cherry keyboard is big and ugly, but its keys feel responsive. The mouse looks similarly old-fashioned but also does the job effectively, despite a somewhat loose scroll wheel. The monitor - a matte-finish 23in Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS - has an even backlight and produces natural colours and blacks.
The Fusion Blaze's sole disadvantage is its lack of an SSD. If you feel that you absolutely need the faster boot times and responsiveness an SSD can bring, then Wired2Fire’s excellent Diablo Ultima and PC Specialist’s Vanquish 650Ti both have fast 120GB solid state drives in addition to large hard disks, but this comes at the cost of gaming performance. In the end, in the face of very stiff competition, the Fusion Blaze's great gaming performance, raw processor power and room for expansion earn it a Best Buy award.

Chillblast Fusion Stealth

The Chillblast Fusion Stealth is a powerful gaming system with all the features you'd expect to see on a high-end PC, such as an SSD, a large Nvidia graphics card with 2GB of memory and an overclocked Core i5 processor. More unusual, though, is the Stealth's near-silent performance.
Most users will find a PC with an Intel Core i5-3570K processor running at 4.3GHz more than powerful enough for their needs, regardless of whether it's overclocked or not. Although we appreciate extra speed and performance, many performance systems can be noisy, but not the Fusion Stealth.

The Stealth is built into a Fractal Design Define R4, one of our favourite cases. It has heavy-duty sound proofing on the side panels, on the front panel’s lid and on the removable covers that cover the fan mounts at the top of the case. Another nice touch, which has nothing to do with soundproofing, is an extra bracket mounting slot at the back of the PC. You could use it to provide extra USB ports without blocking any of your PC's valuable expansion slots, for example.
The case fans are also engineered for quiet operation and the neatly designed drive trays use rubber grommets to mute any vibrations from HDDs. There are eight 3 1/2in bays, but one cage can be removed, leaving you with three slots and extra space in case you want to install an unusually long graphics card such as the AMD Radeon HD 6690. 3 1/2in bays are occupied by a 120GB SSD system drive and a 2TB HDD storage disk, while one of the case's two 5 1/4in bays holds a Blu-ray re-writer. The CPU cooler is also a silent model, a Gelid Tranquillo Rev.2, while a 680W Be Quiet! PSU completes the specification.
Even the graphics card, a 2GB Nvidia-based Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II, is virtually inaudible unless you open the case and put your ear to it. The card has a pair of DVI outputs, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort output, and it can handle up four simultaneous displays for desktop use and three for gaming. Using a single 1,920x1,080 monitor we got brilliant frame-rates of 61.4fps in Dirt Showdown and 45.1fps in Crysis 2, both at Ultra quality.


The Fusion Stealth’s processor is an Intel Core i5-3570K that has been modestly overclocked to 4.3GHz, producing an overall score of 110 in our benchmark tests. Although it's by no means the highest score we've ever seen from this processor, it's more than powerful enough for gaming and desktop use. The system has 16GB of RAM in the form of two 8GB modules, so it’ll easily handle memory-intensive tasks such as high-level graphics and video editing, and there are two vacant slots that will let you upgrade it to the motherboard's maximum 32GB of RAM.
The motherboard is an Asus P8Z77-V. This is a popular, well-equipped board, with an 802.11n Wi-Fi module to accompany its Gigabit Ethernet port, two PCI-E x1 slots (although one’s blocked by the graphics card), two PCI slots and three PCI-E x16 slots. Of the latter, one actually runs at x4 and the topmost slot runs at x16 unless the second slot is populated, in which case both will run at x8. There are four SATA3 and four SATA2 ports, but only one SATA2 and two SATA3 ports are in use, leaving plenty of room for expansion.


There are also two unused USB headers, along with two USB2 and two USB3 ports on the front panel and another four USB3 and two USB2 ports at the back. There's also a PS/2 port for a keyboard or mouse, six 3.5mm analogue audio outputs and an optical S/PDIF output. The usual 3.5mm mic and headphone ports are available on the front panel.
The Fusion Stealth is available to buy with either Windows 8 or Windows 7 preinstalled. Our review sample had Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installed. If you want a powerful PC that doesn't sound like a box of irate bees, this is the PC for you, but quiet, high-quality components don't come cheap and this is reflected in the PC's £1,199 price. We've seen faster-performing systems for less, but this is an outstanding PC and our new favourite silent gaming system. If you're after a hardcore gaming PC for the sitting room, you should also take a look at compact gaming rigs such as the Dino PC Microraptor.

Chillblast Fusion Kevlar

An SSD is a brilliant way to make Windows 8 and applications load faster, but it's not usually something that you find in a PC at this price. We're pleased to see that Chillblast has supplied a 120GB Samsung 840 SSD as the boot drive. With UEFI BIOS, it means you can turn on this PC and boot into Windows incredibly quickly.
For your files and documents there's also a 2TB hard disk. Using Windows 8's Libraries, you can easily configure your computer so that all of your documents sit on this hard disk.

Chillblast has made a good choice of processor and motherboard, too, with an AMD A10-5800K CPU and Asus F2A85-M LE motherboard. While the 3.8GHz processor isn't quite as fast as its Intel rivals, it's still plenty fast enough for Windows. In our 2D benchmarks, the CPU combined with 8GB of RAM managed an overall score of 65.
Where this processor trumps its Intel rivals is with its integrated graphics. Managing 42fps in our Dirt Showdown laptop test at a resolution of 1,280x720, it shows that you can easily play games on this PC. Bumping the resolution to 1,920x1,080 we managed a frame rate of 31.9fps by dropping detail settings to medium.


For more graphics performance, the motherboard also has two PCI-E x16 slots. You can add an inexpensive graphics card and, using CrossfireX, combine it with the onboard graphics for a boost; for even more performance, you can fit two faster graphics cards.
There's no need to install a graphics card to run multiple monitors, though, as the A10-5800K supports up to three displays. With three graphics outputs on the motherboard (VGA, DVI and HDMI), you can run multiple displays out of the box.
The system comes with a chunky 21.5in Asus VE228 monitor, with a resolution of 1,920x1,080. It has VGA and DVI inputs and is a decent matt display with accurate colours and wide viewing angles. Contrast was good with pleasingly deep black levels. Our colour calibrator measured it as producing 86.2 per cent of the RGB colour gamut. This isn't amazing, but given that the monitor costs an extra £80 on top of the base system's £420, it's a decent budget monitor.
The Asus F2A85-M LE uses one of AMD's latest chipsets, so there's excellent support for the latest ports. At the rear are a PS/2 port for keyboard or mouse, two USB3 and four USB ports. There's even an eSATA port, as well as the usual Gigabit Ethernet port and audio ports: three 3.5mm ports for 5.1 analogue surround sound and an optical S/PDIF output for those who prefer to go digital. At the front of the PC are two more USB3 ports, a couple of USB ports, plus 3.5mm mic and headphone connectors.


The case is small, light and easy to fit on or under the average desk. It provides next to nothing in terms of sound- or dust- proofing, but the PC isn't particularly noisy and the loudest thing about it is the fan on the CPU cooler; the case fans are virtually silent.
Inside the case, the layout is immediately striking. Rather than mounting the hard disks into 3.5in bays across the width of the case, the 3.5in HDD and 2.5in SDD are both screwed into place sideways on one of the drive cage's uprights. This leaves a bit more space than usual, so you'll be able to fit an AMD 5970 or similarly sized graphics card in, but anything much over 220mm in length will be a tight fit.
Installing any graphics card into the PCI-E x16 slot will block the board's only PCI-E x1 slot below it. There's also a PCI slot. The motherboard has seven SATA3 ports, three of which are in use for the DVD drive, SSD and HDD. There are only two memory slots, both occupied by 4GB modules to provide a total 8GB of RAM.
Chillblast has supplied a basic Cherry keyboard and mouse. They're not much to look at but the keyboard in particularly if better than you might expect, proving to be easy and accurate to touch-type on.
The Fusion Kevlar has plenty of storage and a fast SSD, which makes it a great buy if you have loads of media to store. The processor's capable on-chip graphics make it a good choice than its Intel-based rivals if you want to do a bit of gaming and never plan on upgrading, but the PC Specialist Infinity A10 has greater upgrade potential while the Wired2Fire Velocity VX is better for 3D games

Chillblast Fusion Sprite

The Chillblast Fusion Sprite is neatly understated, but beneath its cool exterior this mid-priced system is a great all-rounder. It's as well suited for gaming as it is for high-powered desktop applications thanks to its 23in Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS monitor, AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics card and an overclocked Intel Core i5-3570K processor.
Chillblast has overclocked the processor, upping its standard clock speed of 3.8GHz to 4.5GHz. Combined with the 8GB of RAM, the Fusion Sprite achieved an excellent overall score of 126 I nour application benchmarks.

Graphics performance was equally as impressive thanks to the Sapphire 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics card. It produced frame rates of 60fps in Dirt Showdown and 28fps in Crysis 2 at Ultra quality and running at Full HD. Dropping the Crysis quality settings produced an even smoother frame rate of 30.3fps, proving that this PC can cope with high-quality gaming.
Rounding the system off is the excellent Iiyama ProLite X2377HDS, which has a resolution of 1,920x1,080. This IPS monitor has a matt screen, to help cut down reflections. We measured a contrast ratio of 1,013:1 and found that out-of-the box it produced 97.7 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut.
In practice, this translates to vivid, accurately coloured images with loads of subtle detail, even in areas of dark shading. Unlike many screens, further calibration did little to improve this, but as it's already excellent, that just means you don't have to spend any time fiddling with awkward monitor controls. The screen's viewing angles are a little poor and its stand doesn't have much scope for adjustment, but these are minor flaws in an otherwise excellent display. It also has an HDMI input, as well as the usual DVI and VGA ports, so you could hook up a games console or Blu-ray player, as well as your PC.
Inside, we found the Fusion Sprite to be a well-built PC with excellent components. The graphics card occupies the Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard's only full-speed PCI-E x16 slot. A second PCI-E x16 slot actually runs at x4, so it's better suited for an expansion card rather than running dual graphics.


There are also two PCI-E x1 slots - one of them blocked by the graphics card - and three PCI slots, so there’s plenty of scope to install expansion cards if you want them. Two of the motherboard's four memory slots are occupied by generic 4GB Team memory modules. They lack the heat spreaders of more expensive RAM, but we experienced no issues with them during our tests. The motherboard can take a maximum of 32GB of RAM, but 8GB is all most people will need, unless you plan on doing a lot of video editing.
There are six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3. One of the latter is connected to a 1TB hard disk, while the DVD-RW drive is hooked up to one of the SATA2 ports. There are plenty of extra ports free in the neatly laid-out case if you want to add extra storage in the future. There are also six vacant 3.5in drive bays - one of them external - and two unused 5.25in bays.


The PC's front panel is home to two USB ports, one of which is USB3, and 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. On the back panel are three more 3.5mm audio outputs for analogue surround sound and an optical S/PDIF output, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port and a PS/2 port. There are six rear USB ports, of which two are USB3.
The case is plain, but sturdy, and the system is quiet when running. The 700W CIT power supply should be able to support most upgrades you're likely to want and we were pleased to find that the case's internal bay is large enough for a full-length AMD Radeon 6950 graphics card. Everything’s neatly laid out inside the case, as well.
A great monitor and good graphics card are the key factors that makes this system stand out. If you’re after a £700 PC that's good for everything, buy this one. The Fusion Sprite wins our coveted Best Buy award.

Chillblast Fusion Bandit

The Chillblast Fusion Bandit is the first PC we've reviewed that uses one of Intel's new 4th generation Core processors - also known as Haswell. It's also the first to contain an Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 graphics card, so this PC is very much comprised of the latest technology.

The Fusion Bandit has a quad-core Intel Core i5-4670K processor, which is the successor to the very successful 3rd generation Core i5-3570K. The 4670K is available factory-overclocked to 4.7GHz if you want maximum performance or 4.6GHz if prefer a quieter PC. Either way, it's aided by a liquid cooling system mounted at the top of the case.

Intel's latest processor is yet another predictable stride forward
It performed well in our application benchmarks, scoring 132 in our image- and video-editing tests, 127 in the multitasking test and 130 overall. However, we've obtained higher scores using the same processor and motherboard in our test rig.
The installed motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP. As it's designed for 4th-generation Core processors, it uses Intel's new LGA1150 processor socket, which isn't backwards compatible with older Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge CPUs. We were pleased to see that the motherboard has six SATA3 ports, rather than the mixture of SATA2 and SATA3 ports familiar to users of the last generation of LGA1155 boards. This means that you no longer need to worry about running out of faster SATA3 ports. If you buy a new SSD drive, for instance, you can plug it into the motherboard and be confident that it will perform at the best possible speed.


Another notable feature is the presence of two USB3 headers mid-board. One of these is connected to a pair of USB3 ports on the front panel, but the other is vacant, giving you scope to add an additional USB3 backplane. There are also two USB2 headers, both of which are occupied. The rest of the motherboard's specification is a little less exciting. It has two PCI-E x16 slots, but only one runs at x16, the other runs at x4. There are also two PCI-E x1 slots, one of which is blocked by the graphics card, and two PCI slots. There are four memory slots, two of which are occupied by 8GB Crucial modules running at 1,600MHz. The motherboard can handle up to 32GB of RAM.
At the back of the PC are eight USB ports, of which only two are USB2. There's also a PS/2 port should you need to connect an older mouse or keyboard. The motherboard uses a Realtek ALC892 audio codec chip, which has 7.1 analogue audio and optical S/PDIF outputs in addition to the obligatory 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports on the front panel. There are also DVI, VGA and HDMI ports for the processor's on-chip Intel HD 4600 graphics, but you’ll obviously want to use the installed Nvidia GeForce GTX 770.


The GeForce GTX 770 has 2GB of onboard graphics memory and is certainly fast. It provided us with frame rates of 81.5fps in Dirt Showdown and 50.5fps in Crysis 2, both at Ultra quality, 4x AA and a resolution of 1,920x1,080. You’ll have no problem playing the latest games.
The graphics card is massive, but there's plenty of room for it in the extremely sturdy Fractal Design case. Should you want to install an even larger graphics card, the drive cage immediately opposite the top PCI-E x16 slot can be unscrewed and removed.
In total, there are eight bays on vibration-damped rails that can be used for either 3 1/2in or 2 1/2in hard disks. Two of these are occupied by a 128GB SSD and a 2TB hard disk. There are also two 5 1/4in bays, one of which contains a Blu-ray drive.
Although the case has heavy-duty sound-proofing built into it, the Fusion Bandit isn’t quiet. It has lots of fans, great airflow and a liquid cooling system, which means there's a constant low hum when the PC is idle. If you opt for the 4.6GHz quiet overclock, it never gets any louder than that. If you instead opt for the 4.7GHz performance configuration, the noise rises when you encode video or play games. It's not a particularly annoying sound, but you'll definitely want to keep this PC on the floor rather than the desk next to you.
The Fusion Bandit is an extremely well-made system that contains all the latest components. It performed well enough to act as a decent baseline standard by which we can judge future 4th-generation Core-based PCs and its gaming performance is outstanding. However, given that we've squeezed higher scores out of the processor ourselves we can't give this PC are unequivocal recommendation with an award.

Chillblast Fusion Kestrel

The Chillblast Fusion Kestrel has a sturdy case which provides a reasonable amount of sound proofing. It's not particularly dust-proof, due to the large number of mounting points for additional fans, but there are fine mesh grilles over the lower vents that'll help keep the worst of the fluff out. We like the case's matt finish and relatively neutral design, as far as black boxes go. Inside, the case has eight 3 1/2in drive bays, one of them an external bay that's ideal for a memory card reader or hot-swappable hard drive caddy, and three 5 1/4in bays.

The front panel has three USB ports, one of them USB3, and the usual 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. An Asus Z87-K motherboard gives you another four USB and two USB3 ports at the rear of the case, as well as two PS/2 ports. There's also the usual Gigabit Ethernet port and three 3.5mm stereo outputs for 5.1 analogue surround sound.


The PC comes with Intel's latest Core i5-4670K processor, but the speed it runs at depends on which upgrades you want to add to the PC. The most basic version of the system, which costs £640, uses an Intel stock cooler, which doesn't provide enough heat dissipation to successfully overclock the system. However, for an extra £16, you can get a Xigmatek Gaia Cooler, which makes it possible for Chillblast to overclock the system to 4.3GHz, producing an overall score of 132 in our benchmark tests.
Without the overclock in place, we saw a more sedate score of 115 under the same test conditions, but this is still enough to chew through most tasks at a rate of knots. The overclocked processor is a nice option, and we certainly appreciate having someone else do the slightly fiddly job of fitting the oversized cooler, but the processor is quick enough at its stock speed that for most users the enhanced clock speed will be more a bragging point than an item of practical necessity.
Chillblast will also provide other upgrades which will have a more perceptible impact on the system's performance. If you're a keen gamer, the £59 upgrade to a 2GB Nvidia GTX 760 graphics card is definitely one to go for. With this card fitted we saw frame rates of 63.9fps in Dirt Showdown and 41.1fps in Crysis 2, both at maximum quality and a resolution of 1,920x1,080. If you're prepared to play games at lower detail levels, the standard option of an overclocked 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti will do nicely: with this card, we saw a sluggish 24fps in Crysis 2 until we dropped to Extreme quality, which brought the frame rate up to 38fps. This card failed our Dirt Showdown test due to a driver conflict; this is a problem we often have with GTX 650 Ti-based cards.
For general responsiveness and shorter boot times, adding an SSD is a quick and simple way to improve your PC. £68 gets you a 120GB SSD in addition to the PC's 1TB hard disk. All configurations include 8GB RAM, which is plenty for all standard purposes, unless you want to get into serious editing of ultra-high-resolution images or run more than one virtual machine at once.
Although the PC's motherboard doesn't have a particularly exciting selection of rear ports, it's well equipped with expansion slots, with three PCI slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI-E x16 slots. However, one of the PCI-E x1 slots is inevitably blocked by whatever graphics card is installed, while the second, PCI-E x16 slot actually only runs at x4 speed. This won't be a problem unless you plan on running two high-end graphics cards in SLI mode, however. The motherboard also has a full complement of six SATA3 ports, leaving either three or four vacant for your own upgrades depending on what hard disk configuration you go for.

For £116 you can add an Iiyama Prolite X2377HDS monitor to the system - this is much less than you'd normally have to pay for this screen. While the monitor is a bit awkward to adjust and doesn't have great viewing angles, we measured its IPS panel as being able to display 97.7% of the sRGB colour gamut, and with an excellent contrast ratio of 1,013:1. This was borne out by our subjective testing, too; the monitor displayed accurate colours and there was plenty of detail visible in both pale and shadowy images.
The Kestrel comes with a basic Cherry keyboard and mouse. They're not the best input devices in the world, but both are fairly comfortable and accurate to use. You also get a 550W Corsair power supply, and Chillblast provides a two-year collect and return warranty which covers both parts and labour for the duration.
The high-spec version of this PC, including all the optional upgrades we've mentioned, costs £900 and is an excellent all-round system. If you're on a budget, rather than getting the basic version of the PC, you're better off with one of our Budget Buy winners such as the PC Specialist Infinity A10 Pro Elite or Mesh Elite G4-i5 Plus - CS. However, when taken as a fully upgraded system, the Fusion Kestrel is a monster PC and takes away an Ultimate award.

Apple 24-inch 2.8GHz iMac

 
One of the most striking things about Apple's latest all-in-one iMac computer is its dazzling screen.
The 24in glossy widescreen LCD is stunningly bright and makes photos and videos look vivid. The resolution of 1,920x1,200 pixels means it can display 1080p high definition video. Our high-definition WMV files looked sharp and clear but, disappointingly, there's no built-in Blu-ray drive, and Apple's DVD Player program doesn't yet support Blu-ray playback.
The iMac isn't much larger than a standalone 24in monitor, so it doesn't take up much space on your desk. It isn't designed to be upgraded internally, though. There aren't any free drive bays or PCI slots, but it does have three USB ports as well as a FireWire 400 and a FireWire 800 port for adding peripherals.
These ports are essential for adding more storage, since the 320GB hard disk could quickly fill up if you use the bundled iLife 08 software to edit lots of videos, photos and music. We'd expect at least 500GB of storage in a computer at this price.
We were disappointed by the ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro graphics card. It's just powerful enough to play current 3D games, but you'll have to settle for less detailed graphics to get smooth frame rates. A more powerful Nvidia GeForce 8800GS card costs £90 extra.
Unlike previous iMacs, which used laptop processors, this new model appears to have a desktop version. CPU-Z reported it as a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo E8235 with a frontside bus of 1,066MHz. Apple wouldn't confirm if this was one of Intel's brand new processors, but its performance in our Windows applications tests was close to that of a 3GHz Core 2 Duo E6850, so it's more than capable of handling demanding tasks. The 2GB of RAM should be enough for most people, but an extra 2GB can be added if you need more.
Draft-N wireless networking and Bluetooth are built in, which is unusual in desktop computers. A remote is included for controlling Apple's Front Row software, but there's no built-in TV tuner. The headphone jack also doubles as an S/PDIF socket for connecting a surround-sound amplifier, but there aren't any 5.1 analogue outputs.
We were impressed with the iMac's quiet, slim design and great display. It's better suited as a space-saving alternative to a tower PC than most laptops thanks to its large, high-resolution screen and fast performance. However, if you're not satisfied with its hard disk space and graphics card, then consider paying extra for Acer's well-specified Aspire 8920G laptop.

Apple 21.5-inch iMac

The new Apple iMac is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. At its thinnest point, the screen is just 5mm thick, but it curves out towards the middle in order to house the rest of its hardware. Still, its brushed aluminium finish is as classy as ever - even the kettle plug has been designed to seamlessly blend in with its impeccably smooth contours.

It’s had to make a few sacrifices to stay so slim, with the DVD drive being the main casualty from the previous model. It’s also lost its mini-FireWire port around the back, but neither are likely to be big losses in this day and age.
We were pleased to see that all four of its USB ports now support USB3, plus there are now two Thunderbolt ports for super-fast external storage or connecting additional displays. The headphone output and Gigabit Ethernet port remain from last year, although the built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi may be more convenient.
The 21.5in version doesn’t have the huge 2,560x1,440 resolution of its 27in cousin, but its full HD (1,920x1,080) IPS panel is gorgeous to look at. We’re sometimes slightly hesitant about glossy displays, but Apple has pulled it off thanks to its full lamination display. This removes the 2mm gap that’s traditionally between the glass panel and LCD, and helps keep the screen brighter while allowing the iMac to be thinner. In addition, the anti-reflective coating is designed to cut reflections by 75 per cent.


Probing a little deeper into its display quality, our colour calibrator revealed it was showing 97.7 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut straight out of the box. This is exactly what we’d expect to see from an IPS screen, and its high level of colour accuracy translated very well in our subjective image tests as well. Reds, greens and blues were extremely rich and vibrant, blacks were deep, and whites were bright and clean. Our high dynamic range test photos also showed high levels of detail across each image, and the LED backlight was pretty much uniform across the entire screen. Its wide viewing angles were equally superb, and we had to be almost side-on before the screen darkened.
While the new iMac’s design may be enough for some to warrant an immediate purchase, most will want its interior processing power to match its flawless outer shell. The 21.5in version is available in multiple specifications, starting at £1,099 for an 8GB, quad-core 2.7GHz Intel Core i5 PC with an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics chip. The only upgrade option here is to 16GB of RAM, so the quad-core 2.9GHz Core i5 base model (starting at £1,249) is probably the better bet.


With this model you can choose to upgrade for £160 to a 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-3770S processor (the CPU our review processor shipped with), upgrade the 8GB of RAM to 16GB for £160 and add the £200 Fusion Drive (this adds 128GB of flash memory cache to the 1TB hard disk to improve boot speeds). This can get expensive, and choosing everything will bump the price up to £1,769.
Unsurprisingly, with its Core i7 processor, our test iMac powered through our multimedia benchmarks effortlessly, scoring 108 overall, making it more than capable of handling both fine photo and video editing programs simultaneously. If you wanted to save money and go for the Core i5 processor, we'd expect the computer to score around 90 in our benchmarks. This makes the iMac one of the most powerful all-in-one PCs that we've reviewed.
We were slightly disappointed by its graphics performance. Our review sample came with a 512MB Nvidia GeForce GT 650M card, but it only managed 23fps in our Call of Duty 4 test at a 1,920x1,080 resolution and 4x AA. The previous iMac managed a much more respectable 41fps with its 512MB AMD Radeon HD 6750M mobile graphics processor at the same resolution, so the new iMac has taken a slight step backwards when it comes to gaming performance.
While 1TB of storage should be enough for most people, if you want that extra boost of performance you may want the Fusion Drive. This adds a 128GB SSD as a cache for your most commonly-accessed files, which should make starting OS X and applications faster. We tested an iMac with this drive and it booted in under 16 seconds. However, the Fusion Drive is expensive at £200, and the traditional hard disk-based system is hardly slow.

Apple ships the iMac with its Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse as standard. We found the keyboard very comfortable to use. All the keys were well-spaced and had plenty of feedback. Its wide range of shortcut keys, including media controls, screen brightness and Dashboard and Expose shortcuts, really help using Mac OS X to its full.
The Magic Mouse was just a little too small for our hands and, as a result, prolonged use quickly became a little uncomfortable. We’d recommend opting for the free upgrade to the Magic Trackpad instead, as this lets you use multi-touch gestures to navigate Apple’s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion operating system.
One thing that hasn’t been compromised in the iMac’s slim-down, though, is its integrated speakers. Audio was rich and clear, and its impressive bass makes these some of the best all-in-one speakers we’ve ever heard.
With its powerful specs and beautiful, slim design and excellent OS the new Apple iMac remains the most desirable all-in-one, but there's not getting away from the fact that it's expensive.

Apple iMac 27in

Apple's latest 27in iMacs are slim, lovely and very expensive. They don't have optical drives anymore, as Apple switched to online software distribution and OS recovery last year. What this polished all-in-one does have is four USB3 ports, an SDHC card reader and two Thunderbolt ports on its back panel. Thunderbolt can be used to connect either high-speed external storage or up to two extra displays to complement the 27in 2,560x1,440 integrated screen. The standard is fast and reliable, but all Thunderbolt hardware shares the disadvantage of being relatively expensive when compared to USB3 hardware.

The top-of-the-range iMac is available with a quad-core 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7 processor, which appears to be an i7-3770. It benefits from Intel Turbo boost, increasing the clock speed of its active cores to 3.9GHz when it’s operating within certain thermal limits. It's incredibly powerful and scored 116 overall in our benchmarks, while the 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 680MX is one of the most powerful graphics processors we've ever seen in an all-in-one PC. While compatibility issues prevent us from running our standard Crysis 2 and Dirt Showdown tests, we ran Call of Duty 4 at a resolution of 2,560x1,440 with 4x anti-aliasing and got a frame rate of 37.2fps. With an increasing number of modern cross-platform games being released with Mac support, we're pleased to see a GPU that can render them well.

However, no one buys an iMac primarily for its gaming abilities. More often, it’s the destiny of these powerful all-in-one PCs to be used for music production or image and video editing. Only two of the iMac's four memory slots are currently in use, each occupied by a 4GB module of 1,600MHz RAM. That should be enough memory for the most enthusiastic digital artist, but those who need extra RAM can upgrade to a maximum 32GB.

The display is a thing of beauty. The 27in IPS screen is huge, with very wide viewing angles, and its 2,560x1,440 resolution means everything's brilliantly sharp. The high resolution and large panel size also make it ideal for image editing. Our colour accuracy tests showed that the display provided 97.5% of the sRGB colour gamut, making it a shade better than most quality IPS displays. The iMac's integrated speakers are also better than those you'll find in your average all-in-one PC. Not much bass, but good mid-range and high-frequency reproduction. Although there aren't any analogue surround sound outputs, the 3.5mm headset output at the back doubles as an optical S/PDIF output.
The iMac we reviewed uses Apple's Fusion Drive SSD caching technology to provide fast access to critical applications. A 128GB SSD is linked by kernel-level software to the iMac's 1TB HDD to create a single volume. The Fusion Drive moves your most commonly used files and applications to the SSD portion of the storage volume, ensuring fast access to the data you need most. It starts by storing the operating system and applications on the SSD, but intelligently moves things between the SSD and HDD as you use the system. In common with other SSD-based storage, our iMac's Fusion array produced fast boot times: it booted to the login screen within 17 seconds of pressing the power switch.

The keyboard and mouse are standard Apple issue, with the mouse's right-click function being disabled by default. Fortunately, enabling it is just a matter of opening the mouse settings within System Preferences and ticking a box. The front of the Magic Mouse is touch sensitive, so it can be used for gesture controls such as sweeping your fingers across it to swipe between screens. The keyboard is ultra-compact and lacks a numeric keypad, but its flat, widely spaced keys are well positioned and help you type accurately, although they don't provide a lot of feedback.
The 27in iMac is currently the best-specified all-in-one PC on the market but this particular model probably costs too much for many potential buyers, who’d possibly be happy with a smaller Apple 21.5-inch iMac.

Wired2Fire Diablo Reactor Z87

The Wired2Fire Diablo Reactor Z87 is housed in a rather attractive matt black BitFenix case which has plenty of room inside and decent soundproofing.
The PC's £710 core specification includes an Asus Z87-K motherboard and an Intel Core i5-4670 processor. £10 upgrades that processor to an unlocked Intel Core i5-4670K. You'll also need a better CPU cooler if you want the PC to be overclocked, and that'll cost you another £19. If you buy the upgraded processor and cooler, Wired2Fire will overclock your PC for free to 4.4GHz, which should improve its already strong benchmark score of 112 to around the 134 mark.

The core system comes with a 1TB hard disk, but an extra £105 will get you a 120GB SSD system disk. This will improve boot times and make your desktop feel faster, but it's not a very good-value upgrade. You can also upgrade from 8GB to 16GB of RAM for £62. Again, unless you plan on doing a lot of memory intensive work, such as running multiple virtual machines at once, you can safely dispense with this upgrade without affecting your PC's performance.
The system is equipped with a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7770 graphics card. This will run Dirt Showdown at Ultra quality at a resolution of 1,920x1,080 at a smooth frame rate of 48.1fps. When running Crysis 2 at 1,920x1,080 and Ultra quality settings, we only saw 23fps, but when we dropped quality settings to Very High we saw an average frame rate of 41.3fps.
For £9 you can upgrade to an AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics card with 1GB of memory. This isn’t a huge upgrade, but it did improve our Dirt Showdown score to an average frame rate of 59.3fps. The card still struggled with Crysis 2 at maximum quality settings, producing a fairly jerky average frame rate of 24.4fps, but dropping the graphics quality to Extreme gave us a perfectly smooth frame rate of 34.7fps.


Wired2Fire will supply a 23in AOC I2367FH IPS monitor for £120. If you don't already have a really good screen, you could do much worse than this one. We liked its brushed-aluminium design, even though it was a little difficult to fit onto its stand and has its controls hidden at the back of its chassis. It's an IPS display with a typically excellent contrast ratio of 1129:1. The practical benefits of this are immediately apparent when looking at images with lots of dark areas, as this monitor let us see plenty of detail in the shadows. The display didn't produce such good results as we'd normally expect from an IPS panel in our colour gamut coverage test, as it could only display 86.2% of the sRGB colour gamut, but we didn't notice any unusual colour casts on our test images.
The keyboard and mouse are an extremely cheap Octigen set. The keyboard in particular isn't pleasant to use, being spongy and unresponsive. The mouse drags a little when used, but is generally fine. Both will do the job until you find something better, but you will want to upgrade soon.
Whatever specification you opt for, Wired2Fire will install Classic Shell, which is an alternative to the Windows 8 Start screen which gives you a traditional Start menu button. Classic Shell gets better with every iteration and makes a great alternative if you can't get to grips with Windows 8's default interface. If you'd rather use tiles and apps - which are particularly handy if you have a touchscreen display - it's simple to change Classic Shell's settings so you can use both its menu and the Start screen and configure the shortcuts in any way you like.


The Diablo Reactor Z87 is available in a number of different configurations, depending on how much you want to pay and which components you require. The most highly specified version, with all the extra components, costs £900. However, if you want to save a bit of money, you can keep the upgraded graphics card and good quality display, dispense with the rest of the upgrades and still have an outstanding PC for £839. Its gaming performance wasn’t as good as the Chillblast Fusion Kestrel, but this is a powerful and well-made PC nonetheless; and if you opt for the upgraded processor cooler and factory overclock you can add a significant amount of desktop application power for just £29.

Overclockers Titan 400i Dagger

Even before you add any upgrades, the Overclockers Titan 400i Dagger costs a fairly heavy £710, so isn't in contention for our Budget Buy award. However, it's a powerful system that stands out among most anonymous PC black boxes thanks to its particularly snazzy-looking white case. As well as looking good, it's well finished and gives you plenty of space to work in.

The PC is also unusual in that it has a water-cooling system for its processor. This makes a high-pitched whine, and the case also has fairly minimal soundproofing thanks to its copious air vents, which are designed to make it easy to fit extra fans if you need them. This makes the Dagger far from the quietest system we've seen, so we'd definitely recommend keeping this PC on the floor.
This cooling system should allow the PC's Intel Core i5-4670K processor to be overclocked, although Overclockers hasn't done so for you. The powerful processor produced an overall score of 109 in our benchmark tests. The MSI Z87-G43 motherboard is fitted with 8GB of 1,600MHz RAM, leaving space for two more modules.
The motherboard also has three PCI slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI-E x16 slots. However, one of the x1 slots is blocked by the graphics card above it and, as with most motherboards, the second x16 slot only runs at x4 speed. There are six SATA3 ports and a vacant USB3 header.
The case's front panel has just two USB ports and the usual 3.5mm mic and headphone connectors. At the back of the motherboard, you'll find a PS/2 port for a mouse or keyboard, six USB ports and two USB3 ports. There are also six 3.5mm stereo outputs for 7.1 analogue surround sound.


The graphics card comes with the PC's base specification, and is a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti. We'd have liked to have the option to upgrade the card, as it doesn't have the performance that hardcore gamers might hope for. Due to driver compatibility problems with the graphics card, we weren't able to run our Dirt Showdown test, but we saw a fairly jerky frame rate of 23.9fps in Crysis 2 at Ultra quality and a resolution of 1,920x1,080. Drop the quality to Extreme, though, and you'll see frame rates hit a nearly-smooth average of 29.9fps.
The PC is equipped with a DVD-RW drive and a 1TB hard disk. You can add an SSD for the minimal cost of £25. Unfortunately, this is only a 60GB SSD, which is so small as to be of rather minimal use. You can get a 120GB SSD for a very reasonable £44, which is a much better idea.


For £156 you can have a matt 23.6in Iiyama Prolite E2481HS monitor, which is about the market price for this display. While many monitors don't really benefit from calibration, the E2481HS is an exception. At default settings, it could display just 89.4% of the sRGB colour gamut, and looked rather washed out. After calibration it could display an excellent 97% of sRGB, and colours looked much more lifelike. Unfortunately, a calibration tool will set you back around £100 anyway, so we wish the monitor could display more accurate colours out of the box.
While it's easy to become overwhelmed by choice when given a range of upgrades to select from, Overclockers has perhaps narrowed the field a little too much by only providing the option of an SSD upgrade for its Titan 400i Dagger. Although the PC is well made and thoughtfully designed, neither the system's base specification nor its upgrades are especially good value. If you're on a budget, we recommend the PC Specialist Infinity A10 Pro Elite, while those looking to splash out are better off with the Chillblast Fusion Kestrel.