Labs

IMPORTANT NOTE
This review was written before PC Pro became aware of the current situation at Evesham, now run by a different management team. Currently, PC Pro does not recommend anyone buys an Evesham system.

It's difficult to see where most of the budget has gone with the Evesham Evolve MX900. It has some nice touches, such as the 400GB hard disk and the one-year on-site warranty, but there's just not enough else to get excited about.

The Evolve MX900 is based on a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo E6550 and 2GB of RAM, and in performance terms it's at the bottom of the pile with the identically powered Mesh. While its benchmark score of 1.14 islow in this company, it's certainly plenty for all but the most intensive tasks, so that

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isn't the biggest issue.

Graphically, the 8600 GTS is a step up from the 8600 GT cards in the Mesh, PC Specialist and Zoostorm systems, but only a small one. We managed to get Crysis running at a playable 30fps with Medium settings only by lowering the resolution to a less-than-ideal 1,024 x 768, so gaming isn't a strength, either.

The TFT is also only average. We don't have a problem with the size- 19in is still plenty for most everyday tasks - but the GNR TS902W doesn't exactly offer the finest image quality. Colours are muted and the backlight isa little uneven. That said, it's certainly up to the tasks of browsing and working. There are no external speakers, so you'll have to make do with those built into the monitor if you want audio, and there's no sign of any additional perks such as TV tuners, wireless adapters or other expansion cards.

You also get a mere 350W power supply in the case, so adding a second graphics card or filling the drive bays with more components may proveto be problematic inthe future.

The Logitech Cordless Desktop 650 mouse and keyboard are comfortable, if not quite as luxurious as the Cordless 1500version of the Chillblast.

Vista Home Premium comes as standard, and you get Works 8.5 and some media software bundled in, but there just isn't enough here to match the better systems this month.

When you see what other manufacturers are cramming in for £599, the Evesham looks a little weak.