48 JANUARY2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE383
01
Abasic PC costing around £350 will
be able to run everydayoffice,
multimedia and education software and will
easily cope with surfing the internet. It might
even be able to run some modern games.
Many PCs can be sold either with or
without amonitor.Ifyou don’t like the
displaythe manufacturer is offering, you
canalways use your current one,orbuy
another one separately.
02
If you want to playgames, you’ll
have to upgrade the graphics card.
Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX
1050 will cope well with many 3D games, but
to playthe latest 3D games smoothly (and
enjoythe best-quality graphics) it’s worth
upgrading to amore powerful card such as
the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070.
Choosinga... PCsystem
03
All modern PCs come with at least
adual-core processor and are
capable of most tasks. Anyone who
regularly undertakes demanding tasks
such as video editing and encoding
should consider ahexa-core or even
an octa-core processor.
04
There are plenty of good reasons to
upgrade the PC’s memory or hard
disk. If you’ll use your PC forgaming, video
editing or other demanding tasks, you’ll
need at least 8GB of RAMand alarge hard
disk; 1TB should suffice.Many new PCs have
an SSD,whichspeeds up the time it takes for
your PC to boot and forprograms to load.
05
Having plenty of USB portsis
always useful, as most computer
peripherals attach to these ports. Most new
PCs come with USB3 or the latest USB3.1
ports, which provide faster data transfers
when used with supported devices than the
older USB2 standard.
06
Most new PCs now come with
Windows 10 pre-installed. Don’t be
tooeasily swayed by the inclusion of other
software,though, as it maybethat you’ll
never use it.
07
While most PCs come in cases of
asimilar size,some have more
compact mini tower or mini PC cases.
These smaller PCs will fit under your TV
or on your desk more easily,but bear in
mind that they’re significantly harder to
upgrade than full-size machines.
PCs
ACERChromeboxCXI3
★★★★★
£528•uk.insight.com
RASPBERRYPI
4ModelB
★★★★★
£34•thepihut.com
An absolutely tiny Chrome OS
system, the Chromebox CXI3 is
compact enough to attach to
the back of amonitor.Even better,ithas more
power than most Chromeboxes, thanks to its
Core i5 processor,and is loaded with useful
ports in spiteofits minimal size.It’s cheap,too,
although we’d recommend investing in abetter mouse and keyboard
than the bundled peripherals.
Afaster
quicker
and dua
make the Pi 4amuch be
than previous Pi models,
hobbyist board, either.4Kvideo implementation could be better
–wehad issues getting smooth playback in Raspbian –but that’s
the only noteworthy concern.
PROCESSORQuad-core 1.6GHz IntelCorei5-82500U•RAM8GB•FRONTUSBPORTS2x USB3•
REARUSBPORTS3x USB3, 1x USB Type-C•TOTALSTORAGE64GB SSD•DISPLAYNone•
OPERATINGSYSTEMChrome OS•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.acer.com•
PARTCODEDT.ZOSEK.001•FULLREVIEWAug2019
PROCESSOR1.5GHz quad-coreBroadcom BCM2711•RAM1GB•USBPORTS1x USB Type-C
(power),2xUSB2, 2x USB3•STORAGEMicroSD card slot•DISPLAYNone•OPERATING
SYSTEMRaspbian•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.raspberypi.org•PARTCODEPi 4
Model B•FULLREVIEWSep2019
CCLPaladin
★★★★★
£1,625•www.cclonline.com
The Paladin is stuffed
with AMD’s latest
technology,including the
excellent octa-core Ryzen 73700X CPU
and a4K-capable Radeon RX 5700 XT
graphics card. Storage is another highlight:
the SSD isn’t aPCI-E 4.0 model, which the
motherboard is compatible with, but it’s
still very fast and offers an enormous 1TB
of space by itself.
PROCESSOROcta-core3.6GHz AMDRyzen 73700X•RAM16GB•FRONTUSBPORTS2x USB2,
2x USB3•REARUSBPORTS2x USB2, 2x USB3,2xUSB3.1, 1x USBType-C•TOTALSTORAGE1TB
SSD, 2TB hard disk•GRAPHICSCARD8GBAMD Ryzen73700X•OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows
10 Home•WARRANTYThreeyears collectand return•DETAILSwww.cclonline.com•PART
CODEGAME-PBME 0202 0304 0100020002000000 0000 0200 01•FULLREVIEWNov2019
PALICOMPAMDAbyss
★★★★★
£700•www.palicomp.co.uk
At this price,you’d
seriously struggle to find
amore comprehensively
capable desktop system than Palicomp’s
AMD Abyss. It can multitask with
serious applications just as well as it
can run games, and with its large,fast
NVMe SSD,itwon’t be slowed down
by storage.There’s alot of room for
future upgrades, too.
PROCESSORHexa-core 3.6GHz AMDRyzen 52600X•RAM8GB•FRONTUSBPORTS2x USB2,
1x USB3•REARUSBPORTS2x USB2, 2x USB3, 2x USB3.1, 1x USB Type-C•TOTALSTORAGE
512GBSSD,1TB hard disk•GRAPHICSCARD8GBAMD Radeon RX570Armor 8GBOC•
OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows10Home•WARRANTYThreeyears RTB•DETAILS
http://www.palicomp.co.uk•PARTCODERYZ6•FULLREVIEWApr2019
YPI
t
rprocessor,
networking
alHDMI outputs
etterdesktop computer
,and it hasn’t lost any appeal as acheap
