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Ginger6 G6 Apollo 2300 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £699
inc VAT

Although the Blu-ray re-writer and 8GB RAM are appealing if you're into video making, many will prefer better graphics and more upgrade potential.

Specifications

2.8GHz Intel Core i5-2300, 8GB RAM, 21.5in 1,920×1,080 display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Ginger 6’s G6 Apollo 2300 is a complete Sandy Bridge system with a few more multimedia features than most. The most immediately obvious are 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray rewriter, which could be useful if you’re interested in editing your own videos and burning them to Blu-ray.

If you’re not a budding Robert Rodriguez, there’s a less to draw the eye. The case is a compact but rather nondescript black box. It doesn’t have many ventilation gaps, but there’s no sound or dust proofing either. However, the stock Intel cooler and single case fan don’t make a huge amount of noise. The case’s interior is bare metal, but the edges are rolled to keep you from cutting yourself. It’s not particularly big, but there’s not much in it either. Just one of the PC’s four internal 3 1/2in drive bays is occupied, while both externally facing 3 1/2in bays are empty. There are just two 5 1/4in bays, of which one is taken up by the BD-RE drive.

Ginger6 G6 Apollo 2300 open

The Nvidia GeForce GT 430 graphics card is tiny and its performance is a minimal improvement on the integrated graphical capabilities of recent Intel Core processors. It produced frame rates of just 14.3fps in Call of Duty 4, 6.4fps in Crysis and 5.5fps in STALKER. Needless to say, you won’t be doing much 3D gaming with this PC. The only significant advantage the graphics card has over the Asus P8H67-M LX motherboard’s integrated graphics is its HDMI output.

If you decide to upgrade, you’ll also want to invest in some Molex to PCI-E converters. The 500W power supply can provide enough juice for a modestly powerful graphics card, but lacks the relevant plugs. One of the motherboard’s PCI slots is blocked by the graphics card. There’s a second PCI slot and a PCI-E x4 slot, but that’s it as far as your upgrade potential goes. There are only two memory slots, which can handle a maximum 16GB of RAM, but the existing 8GB of RAM means you won’t have much need to upgrade. There are two occupied SATA III ports and four vacant SATA II ports, which are fast enough unless you need to fit some SSDs.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core i5-2300
Processor external bus 100MHz (Sandy Bridge DMI)
Processor multiplier x28
Processor clock speed 2.8GHz
Processor socket LGA1155
Memory 8
Memory type PC3-10666
Maximum memory 32GB
Motherboard Asus P8H67-M LX
Motherboard chipset Intel H67 Express

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 2/6
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/0
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/0
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support none

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 0 (0)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 1 (0)
Free Serial ATA ports 4
Free memory slots 0
Free 3.5in drive bays 5

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Samsung HD103SJ
Interface SATA2
Total storage capacity 1,000GB

Graphics

Graphics card(s) Nvidia GeForce GT 430
Graphics/video ports VGA, DVI, HDMI

Sound

Sound Realtek ALC887
Sound outputs 5.1 line out, stereo line out, mic in
Speakers Creative A40 2.0

Removable Drives

Supported memory cards none
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL, BD-R/RE

Display

Viewable size 21.5 in
Screen model BenQ G2222HDL
Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Screen inputs DVI, VGA

Other Hardware

Keyboard Microsoft Wired Keyboard 400
Mouse Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse

Software

Software included none
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty one year collect and return
Price £699
Details www.ginger6.com

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