Systemax Reliance 6007 review

There are few chances in life to really and truly have it all.

When one comes along, it's best to grasp it with both hands. At first glance, the Systemax Reliance 6007 looks like one of those chances: it's just bulging and bristling with all the latest technology, and it costs just twelve hundred pounds.

BURNING DESIRES

The DVD-writer in this system burns DVD+R discs at 16x, that's 16 times the speed at which a normal DVD movie disc revolves. No drive can currently record data to a writeable DVD any faster. The other optical disc drive is a simple Samsung DVD-ROM drive. Although it can't write DVDs or CDs, the fact that you have two drives means you can make direct disc-to-disc copies with no faffing about.

When you can't be bothered to archive your data to DVD, you can store it on the capacious 200GB hard disk. With a hard disk this big you won't need to worry about running out of storage capacity or room to install new programs. You also have an impressive 1GB of fast 400MHz RAM, which will facilitate the smooth running of your programs. The kind of programs for which you'd buy a system like this - games, video and music editing and so on - are likely to demand a lot of memory. With this much RAM, you need never worry that your system won't be able to meet these demands- that is, unless you're rendering the special effects for the next Star Wars film.

IMPRESSIVE BUNDLE

As well as its hardware features the Reliance comes with an impressive bundle of software. Most exciting are the games, which include the first-person shooters FarCry and XIII, both former Top 50 award winners. Gamers will also be pleased to have surround sound, but the P5800 speakers aren't the best we've heard. The treble sounds a bit reedy, giving music a tinny twang, and the subwoofer sounds underpowered.

If you enjoy more creative pursuits during your free time, you could use the free edition of Roxio Creator 7 (another Top 50 winner) to edit your home movies and burn them to DVD for all your friends and relatives to watch. This system has two FireWire ports, so you'll have no trouble transferring your home videos from a digital camcorder to the Reliance.

ERGONOMICS

The Reliance's 17in CTX TFT is much the same as the model that won our last TFT monitor group test. The only difference is that the CTX S762A uses a VGA connector to hook up to the PC. The S762G that won our group test uses a DVI connector, which produces a better image as it's fully digital. A DVI connector eliminates the need to convert the video signal from digital to analogue and back again, a process that can corrupt the data. Nevertheless, this is a good monitor. Viewing angles are decent and the picture is sharp and bright. The mouse and keyboard are not uncomfortable, but they're nothing to write home about.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Make no mistake: this is a fast PC. It scored 1427 in our 2D benchmarks, which guarantees that it will cope with even the most demanding 2D tasks such as music and video editing. In our Doom 3 benchmark the Reliance clocked up a frame rate of 33.4 frames per second. Doom 3 is the most graphically demanding 3D game on the market at the moment. To place maximum stress on the systems we review, we run the Doom 3 benchmark at a resolution of 1,024x768 with anti-aliasing at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 8x. These settings make games look good, but place extra demands on the processor. Despite being pushed this hard, the Reliance mustered an impressive 33.4fps, fast enough to be played enjoyably even at these high settings.