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Arbico CD7400 XL review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £500
inc VAT

Specifications

2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E7400, 4.000000 RAM, 19in 1,440×900 display, Windows Vista Home Premium (XP Home and Vista 64-bit available on request)

Arbico

Arbico’s CD7400 XL has a good specification for its price, with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 processor, a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card and a 500GB hard disk.

The compact Cooler Master midi tower case has excellent noise dampening. The fans were barely audible, even though one is built into the side panel. It’s one of the most solidly constructed cases here, with plenty of room for extra components, although the blue lights on the front panel won’t be to everyone’s taste.

The CD7400 XL’s Radeon HD 4670 graphics card is among the fastest in the £500 group. At our standard test resolution of 1,440×900 it achieved a playable frame rate of 31.3fps in Call of Duty 4, and 15.2fps in Crysis at 1,680×1,050 with High quality settings and 4xAA. The card has HDMI, DVI and the brand new DisplayPort connection, but only a handful of DisplayPort monitors are available so far.

The included 19in Hannspree XM-S New York monitor uses the DVI interface. It has a resolution of 1,400×900, and image quality is reasonably good. Colours are vivid, but it has a general pink tint that shows up on pale images.

The CD7400 XL didn’t fare too well in our PCMark Vantage tests: its Overall score of just 4,268 was the slowest in this group. This is still more than fast enough for most office and general Windows tasks, though.

Another niggle is that the onboard sound card has only three mini-jack outputs. This means you can’t connect a 5.1 speaker set if you also want to use a microphone, as two of the jacks have a dual function. The two-year warranty is a little misleading too, as it doesn’t cover the cost of any replacement parts in the second year – just the labour to fit them.

Although this isn’t a bad PC – and it draws the least power of the six £500 PCs – it’s rather unremarkable when compared with the competition. If gaming is your primary interest, it’s a decent budget choice, if not quite as fast as Eclipse’s Matrix i74n96GS. Mesh’s Nero 9850HD is much better value if gaming is of no interest, though.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
Processor external bus 266MHz (1,066MHz quad-pumped FSB)
Processor multiplier x10.5
Processor clock speed 2.8GHz
Processor socket LGA775
Level 1 cache 2x 32KB
Level 2 cache 3,072KB
Memory 4.000000
Memory type PC2-6400
Maximum memory 8GB
Motherboard Asrock G31M-S
Motherboard chipset Intel G31+ ICH7
Power consumption standby 4W
Power consumption idle 73W
Power consumption active 101W

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 2/4
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/0
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/0
Wired network ports 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support none
Other ports VGA

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 0 (0)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 1 (0)
Free Serial ATA ports 2
Free memory slots 0
Free 3.5in drive bays 5

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Samsung HD502IJ
Interface SATA/300
Total storage capacity 500GB
Spindle speed 7200rpm

Graphics

Graphics card(s) 512MD ATI Radeon HD4670
Graphics/video ports HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort

Sound

Sound Realtek ALC662
Sound outputs 5.1 line out
Speakers none

Removable Drives

3.5in floppy drive no
Supported memory cards none
Optical drive model HL-DT-ST GH22NS40
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Display

Viewable size 19 in
Screen model Hannspree XM-S New York
Native resolution 1,440×900
Response time 5ms
Screen inputs DVI, VGA

Other Hardware

Modem No
Keyboard Logitech Deluxe 250 Keyboard
Mouse Sumvision 3D Optical Mouse

Software

Software included Nero 8
Operating system Windows Vista Home Premium (XP Home and Vista 64-bit available on request)
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty two years RTB (one year parts and labour, one year labour)
Price £500
Details www.arbico.co.uk

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