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Aria Proteus Vision review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £450
inc VAT

AMD Fusion is perfect for a media centre PC, but this little computer from Aria is a bit too big to fit the bill.

Specifications

1.6GHz AMD Zacate E-350, 4GB RAM, N/A display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

http://www.aria.co.uk

Aria’s Proteus Vision uses AMD’s Fusion motherboard and integrated processor. In this case, the motherboard is an Asus E35M1-M Pro with an AMD Zacate E-350 processor fixed on to it. The dual-core Zacate is a rival to Intel’s latest dual-core Atom processors and it has similar performance, with an Overall score of 32 in our tests. It’s conspicuously slow, but it’ll play video, browse the web and perform other basic tasks without any fuss.

It has a Blu-ray drive, an Asus Xonar DX sound card with support for analogue and digital surround sound, a 1TB hard disk for your media and a 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless adaptor. The sound card is excellent, upgrading the E35M1-M Pro’s basic integrated audio to high quality 7.1 surround sound. These would be great features in compact media centre PC, but the Proteus Vision’s compact tower case, although small, isn’t small enough.

Aria Proteus Vision

It measures 355x174x434mm: too big to fit any TV stand we’ve ever seen. The benefit of the extra size is a bit of room for expansion, with three unused SATA III ports, a 5.25in bay for a second disc drive and three internal 3.5in bays. Between the front and rear panels, the Proteus Vision also has eight USB ports – two of them USB3 – an eSATA III port and a PS/2 input for a mouse or keyboard, while the memory card reader that could handle everything we threw at it.

Aria Proteus Vision back

You can connect the integrated ATI Radeon HD 6310 graphics chipset to a monitor or TV using VGA, DVI or HDMI. The graphics processor only managed 8.1fps in our CoD4 test, but you can play glossy looking casual games like Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies. If you want to upgrade later, there’s a free PCI-E x16 slot and an unoccupied PCI slot. The remaining PCI and PCI-E x1 slots are taken up by the wireless adaptor and sound card respectively. There are only two memory slots, both occupied by 2GB sticks, but they can take a maximum of 4GB each.

Aria Proteus Vision interior

The Proteus Vision comes installed with a 64-bit version of Windows Home Premium and CyberLink’s Blu-ray suite, which adds to its media centre credentials. But this isn’t a media centre PC. It’s too big, and doesn’t look like a something you’d find in your sitting room either. It comes without a remote control, but you could pick up an Media Center-compatible IR remote kit for around £20.

Sometimes appearances really do count. The Proteus Vision could easily have been an ideal media PC, but the choice of case makes that impractical and turns it into just another a small, bland-looking and underpowered desktop. For the same money you can buy OP3’s award-winning Mars without a monitor and then customise it with a sound card and Blu-ray drive.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Processor AMD Zacate E-350
Processor multiplier x20
Processor clock speed 1.6GHz
Processor socket BGA-413
Memory 4
Memory type PC3-10600
Maximum memory 8GB
Motherboard Asus E35M1-M Pro
Motherboard chipset AMD Hudson M1

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 3/6
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/1
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/1
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support 802.11n

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 1 (0)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 1 (1)
Free Serial ATA ports 3
Free memory slots 0
Free 3.5in drive bays 4

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Samsung HD103SJ
Interface SATA II
Total storage capacity 1,000GB

Graphics

Graphics card(s) AMD Zacate Radeon HD 6310
Graphics/video ports HDMI, DVI, VGA

Sound

Sound Asus Xonar DX
Sound outputs 7.1 line out, optical S/PDIF out (shared with line/mic in)
Speakers none

Removable Drives

Supported memory cards SD, SDHC, CF, Memory Stick PRO Duo, MMC, RS-MMC, microSD, Memory Stick Micro (M2), xD
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL BD-ROM

Display

Screen model N/A
Native resolution N/A
Screen inputs N/A

Other Hardware

Keyboard none
Mouse none

Software

Software included CyberLink Blu-ray Suite
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £450
Supplier http://www.aria.co.uk
Details www.aria.co.uk

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