MSI Crystal 945 review

Even a mini PC takes up quite a lot of room with a separate base unit and monitor, not to mention the mess of cabling involved.

MSI's Crystal 945 barebones kit hopes to offer an altogether neater system, with a single unit that houses the 17in LCD and the PC, in a similar way to the iMac.

Stylistically, the Crystal 945 isn't as good-looking as the iMac. Its boxy appearance and silver edges donft look as attractive. However, put it on a desk and slide it back, and the Crystal looks neat and tidy. With nothing else needed, it's amazing how much desk space it frees up.

To use it, you first have to build it. It's quite simple to get inside, as a set of screws detaches the screen and components from the stand. From here, though, you have to remove two metal cages to get access to the memory slots and processor. The memory is simple to fit, as there are two regular DDR2 DIMM slots available. The processor is more involved, as the socket sits under a passive heatsink linked to a fan unit by heat pipes. Both have to be removed to gain access to the LGA775 socket. However, you're limited in your choice of processor. The 945G chipset that the Crystal uses supports only Celeron D, Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors (not Core 2 Duos). To us this is a strange choice, as the Core 2 Duo is faster and also runs cooler than the Pentium D.

We started off by installing a Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) processor, but this caused lots of problems, as the Crystal's cooling system isn't good enough. With the fans running at full speed, which was very noisy, our processor ran at 71C and we couldn't even get Windows to install as the setup application kept crashing. We switched to an Intel Celeron D 2.66GHz processor. This processor runs a lot cooler, and the Crystal's fans span at a lower and much quieter speed.

The Crystal uses a notebook optical drive and hard disk. While these take up less space than their desktop equivalents, they're more expensive. You can expect to pay around £40 for a notebook DVD writer and around £50 for a 100GB 2in PATA hard disk, which is the same price as a 200GB PC hard disk. The small case means you can't add a dedicated graphics card or internal expansion cards. It's good to see, then, that MSI has included two PC Card slots. These can be used for a WiFi card or TV tuner.

Performance using our 2.66GHz Celeron D processor gave us a score similar to our reference PC. There's enough power for desktop and internet applications, but if you want to do anything more serious, such as video editing or image editing, you'll need a computer than can take a faster processor.

Fortunately, the 17in LCD is quite good. An old-fashioned wheel, as you'd expect to find on a CRT, controls the monitor's brightness. We really like it, and the monitor has a greater range of brightness than other LCDs we've reviewed. The picture is very sharp, too, with good colour reproduction. Horizontal viewing angles are brilliant, but the vertical viewing angles mean the picture rapidly degrades when you stand up.

A pair of speakers is built into the bottom of the display's bezel. They're fine for Windows sounds, but you'll want a decent pair of speakers for anything more serious. It's also a shame that there's no dedicated volume control and you have to use the Windows System Tray icon to turn them up or down.

The Crystal is a good idea in theory, particularly if you haven't much desk space. However, the choice of a 945G motherboard is disappointing. A newer chipset with Core 2 Duo support, such as the 945GM, would have made more sense, particularly as heat is a big problem inside this barebones PC's constricted interior.