Lab

Luxury £599 PCs

Buying a PC these days is more than just getting the right processor, graphics card, hard disk and memory. Even with a relatively low budget of £599, it's perfectly possible to select components and peripherals that not only do the job, but do it with comfort, quality and style.

If you break down a PC into its component parts, it's actually not as tight a squeeze as it first seems - as long as you make sensible choices. The monitor is one of the greatest expenses in a system, yet a quick look at our A List shows that you can now buy a top-quality 22in TFT for less than £175, and 20in models cost even less.

Processors have reached the point where even mid-range and low-end models are more than adequate for most tasks- quad-core won't help you get those reports written faster or speed up your web browsing - and we're seeing more and more system builders overclocking slower CPUs to achieve the same performance as their more expensive relations. We takea closer look at a fine candidate on p86.

What's more, the latest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia - primarily the Radeon 3800 family and GeForce 8800 GT - finally offer genuine gaming power at an affordable price.

With some of our test systems offering more power, others with gaming ability, more opting for high-quality screens, and all coming with top-quality keyboards and mice, there's something to suit everybody's taste in this month's Labs. Speakers, TV tuners and wireless adapters complete a selection of fine packages, so read on to see which of these eight Luxury £599 PCs will give you the most for your money.