PC Specialist Infinity K7 review

At the back of the PC are four more USB ports; note that the motherboard doesn’t support USB3. There are also two PS/2 ports and both VGA and DVI graphics outputs, as well as three software-configurable 3.5mm stereo ports for up to 5.1 analogue surround sound. We don’t usually mention Ethernet ports these days, but given the limitations of the motherboard’s other features, we were pleased to see that at least it supports Gigabit Ethernet.

If the motherboard is unimpressive, the monitor that accompanies the system is anything but. It’s a slick-looking 24in matt widescreen AOC E2470Swda monitor. We tested it with our colour calibrator and were pleased by the results. In our tests, the monitor showed a black level of 0.23cd/m2 and an excellent contrast ratio of 1111:1. In our colour test, however, we saw the screen could only display a mediocre 83.6% of the sRGB colour gamut. This wasn’t a huge problem in our subjective tests, however; we didn’t see any pronounced colour tints on the screen, and it’s good enough for everything short of colour-sensitive image editing work. The excellent contrast ratio makes the screen great for playing games, but it’s a shame that the motherboard stymies the PC’s gaming capabilities.

The supplied Logitech mouse and PC Specialist keyboard are cheap and cheerful, but work well enough. The keyboard is the worse of the two, with an odd texture and flimsy-feeling space bar, but will get you started until you decide on a better one. Despite coming with decent peripherals, the core specification of the Infinity K7 is compromised by its cheap motherboard. Poor graphics performance, a relatively weak score in our application benchmarks and a lack of USB3 or SATA3 support make this a poor choice when compared to the Palicomp AMD Kaveri Evolution.