NetHighStreet NET CB399 review

NetHighStreet clearly chose to concentrate on performance with the NET CB399, by including a relatively powerful Athlon XP 2600+ processor and 512MB of DDR memory and a decent GeCube Radeon 9600 SE graphics card.

Even the hard disk is a reasonably-sized 120GB Samsung Spinpoint P80 model, although it's the version with 2MB of cache built in, rather than 8MB. The NET CB399 is also the only system in this group that has FireWire ports, supported by its motherboard's nVidia nForce2 chipset.

Plumping for these high-speed core components has forced compromises, though. The single optical drive has no DVD playback capabilities - it's just a CD writer, albeit one that can write at a fast 52-speed. No speakers were supplied either.

Worst of all, though, is the monitor. The Relisys 17in CRT has a flatter face than the CFL's Samsung, but the sample we reviewed had a horribly dark picture. Pushing up the contrast and the brightness to make it clear enough to use resulted in washed-out colours. The Trust keyboard and optical mouse are better, but still no match for the Microsoft input devices supplied with the CFL. The keyboard, in particular, has a slightly soft action.

The NetHighStreet wins back some points for expansion potential. It has three 5.25in drive bays free, as well as one front-opening and four internal 3.5in bays. Whatever type of storage drive you want to fit - hard disk, DVD writer, Zip drive - there's room for it here. The NetHighStreet has four PCI slots free too, although the top one is very close to the graphics card's heat sink -so is probably best left empty. Although there's a single DDR memory slot free, using it will actually reduce the speed that the memory talks to the motherboard.

The NetHighStreet's strongest showing is in performance, with the best 2D and 3D scores here. This system will be perfectly capable of coping with any previous generation game, but won't do well on the latest titles.