Pacific Millennium 500 review

The sound card uses Yamaha XG electronics, and compatible with older Sound Blaster standards, as well as newer. It has an S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) socket to hook up to a MiniDisc recorder or Dolby Digital receiver.

The speakers are the smallest subwoofer set we've seen. The tiny satellites are tall and slim, and attach to the sides of a monitor using sticky tabs supplied. While the subwoofer is only slightly larger than an average PC speaker, the sound of this set is surprisingly meaty.

When it comes to upgrading, there are important differences between Celerons and Pentium IIs or IIIs. Celerons come in Intel's Socket 370 shape, while Pentiums are Slot 1 modules. Many Celeron buyers are interested in making a later upgrade to Pentium III - but if your PC has its Celeron CPU attached directly to a Socket 370 board, there's no guarantee such an upgrade will be possible (though many predict a Socket 370 Pentium III will appear, it's not a certainty). Pacific show themselves to be forward thinking by sticking the Celeron into an adapter so it attaches to the Slot 1 motherboard - that way, you can replace the chip alone or the entire adapter with a Socket 370 or Slot 1 processor respectively. Pentium III upgrades are therefore assured.

There's lots of space in Pacific's case. Cables are tied down with plastic ties, probably a bit more compulsively on our sample than on the average punter's PC. We don't ask for special treatment, but when we get it we try to point it out so you can insist on the same. The Slot 1 motherboard has a goodly five PCI slots and only two ISA, which is about right.

If you want the fastest PC possible, go for a Pentium III or an Athlon-based machine. But then again, the Celeron 500 is no slouch, offering excellent power per pound. In our speed tests, the Carrera held its own, coming in just 3% slower than the fastest Celeron we've seen. This is insignificant.

The Pacific is a reasonable buy. Its main weakness is the monitor, which needed attention to get it working correctly with Windows - and didn't produce a brilliant picture even then. We're also a bit puzzled as to why Pacific packed the machine with only a two-button mouse. To be more positive, the machine had over 14Gb of disk storage, and offered plenty of expansion space for more disks, cards and memory. We're not keen on its sound card - we've had trouble with Yamahas before - but we were rather tickled by its tiny but effective subwoofer speaker set. Performance was up to scratch, though the 16Mb Millennium G400 graphics card looks less tasty in 3D tests than in 2D. A good machine, but not a great one.