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While PC and component prices are always dropping, we didn’t expect to see a decent dedicated graphics card in a PCs costing this little. If gaming is high on your list of priorities, the Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 card should put the Zoostorm on your shortlist.
It managed a playable 29.4fps in our demanding Crysis benchmark, and blitzed the low-detail Dirt 3 test with over 80fps. Most PCs at this price can’t manage 20fps.
The only problem is that the cost of the card has led to obvious compromises elsewhere. The most obvious is the monitor; we’d expect a 22in as a minimum, but it’s possible to get a decent 24in display at this price. By contrast, the AOC 936swa is a 19in model with a solitary analogue VGA input and a 1,366×768 resolution. It has a dull and uneven backlight but although contrast suffered, colours were reasonably vibrant and images were sharp.
Another major compromise is the processor. We’d expect to see a processor from the latest ranges in any new PC, but the Zoostorm is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad 8400, a processor that’s two years – and two generations – old. It may have four cores and come with a generous 8GB of RAM, but its overall score of 66 in our benchmarks is poor.
That’s not to say that it won’t run most applications, it’s just that tasks such as video encoding, image editing or zipping large archives will take twice as long as they would on a PC with an overclocked Core i5-2500K. Another downside is increased power drain: the Zoostorm drew 75W when idle and the CPU fan also made quite a bit of noise.
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The motherboard is also an old model – to match the processor – and it’s already fitted with the maximum 8GB of RAM. It lacks support for USB3, instead providing outmoded connections such as a serial port. The PS/2 ports are unused due to the USB mouse and keyboard set. The keyboard lacks feedback and the mouse is lightweight, but more importantly they take up two of the six USB ports, leaving only four for attaching other peripherals or charging up your phone or iPod. There’s also little room inside the case for upgrades, with only one hard disk bay and one optical drive bay free. Plus, the two free PCI slots are blocked by the graphics card.
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We can see what PC Nextday has tried to do here, but the graphics card – which can only just handle the latest games – isn’t good enough to make up for the compromises elsewhere. Instead, we’d advise buying Dino PC’s Jurassic 2500 and, if you want to play games, buying a Radeon HD 6670 for a total cost of around £630. There’s no point buying the Zoostorm without the monitor, either, as many of the flaws still remain. Other PCs at this price are more future-proof, even if they lack the 3D power for gaming.
