MSI MEGA mPC 51PV review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 19 Feb 2007

Price when reviewed: £167

Supplier: http://www.scan.co.uk

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

MSI says that the word MEGA in the mPC 51PV's name stands for 'MSI Entertainment and Gaming Appliance'.

It sounds daft, but with a TV card in the spare PCI slot it would make a great media centre PC. It has D-sub, DVI, S-video and composite video outputs, so it can connect easily to a TV. It also has an optical S/PDIF output to connect to a surround-sound amplifier and an optical S/PDIF input for recording from a digital source. Its shoebox shape won't fit easily under a TV, but it is small and smart.

The mPC 51PV's manual has step-by-step instructions, but the English translations are occasionally odd and the black-and-white photos could be clearer. Building the PC is easy, though. The inside of the case is tidy, and all the power and data cables are already in place, ready to attach to the optical drive and hard disk. Unless you get the optical drive in exactly the right place, the case's cover catches on its drive tray when it closes.

Once built, the PC is easy to upgrade. The drive bays are on a hinge and swing up out of the way to give you easy access to the expansion slots. There is a PCI slot, a PCI Express x16 slot and a mini-PCI slot for a wireless network card. It performed reasonably well in our benchmarks, coming in just behind the other PCs that use a socket AM2 processor.

It's not as flashy as Gigabyte's A963-RH, but this is a cheap and easy way to make a media centre PC.

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