Evesham Solar XK review

Most of the PCs we review tend to come in midi tower cases, which usually have plenty of drive bays and PCI slots for adding internal peripherals.

Evesham's Solar XK comes in a smaller mini tower case. It isn't as small as a mini PC, but it doesn't have much more scope for upgrades. Inside, there's only one empty 3in drive bay for adding another hard disk, one spare 5in bay for adding another optical drive and one free PCI Express x1 slot. Fitting cards into the slot could be troublesome since it's wedged between the graphics card and TV tuner.

With 1GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, the XK isn't slow in Windows. It fared well in our benchmarks with scores of 207 in our video-encoding test and 160 in our multitasking test, so it's fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks.

Unfortunately, it's not well suited to playing games. Its GeForce 7600LE graphics card managed 19fps in Doom 3 and 11.4fps in our Call of Duty 2 test. You'll have to turn down the detail settings if you want to play the latest 3D games. This is a shame given the Creative X-Fi sound card, which has EAX processing and can make games such as Doom 3 sound more atmospheric. If you want to take full advantage of the X-Fi card for listening to music or films, you'll need a better pair of speakers. The included Creative Inspire T3100 set lacks mid-range definition and makes vocals sound muddy.

Though the computer isn't great for games, you can keep yourself amused with its TV tuner. It's a dual digital device, so you can record one digital channel while watching another. You can browse recorded shows, as well as your music and photos, using Windows Media Center and the included remote.

Although the Nvidia GeForce 7600 graphics card has both DVI and D-sub ports, the 19in widescreen Cibox monitor has only a D-sub socket. Its 1,440x900 resolution is ideal for watching movies or working on two documents side by side, but there was coarseness in both our colour and greyscale transition tests. With a limited ability to display subtle shade and colour differences, it's not ideal for photo manipulation.

Evesham's Solar XK needs a more powerful graphics card to cope with modern games and, even considering its small size, it has a disappointing lack of room for upgrades. It's a decent family PC at this price, though, with good Windows performance, a 19in widescreen display and a dual digital TV tuner.

Author: Alan Lu