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The Scylla Elite PC is one of the cheapest Windows 8 PCs we’ve seen, but still comes with a 23.6in Asus VS247H widescreen monitor. We’ve seen this screen several times before with other review systems, and it’s a good-quality screen, with even lighting and natural colours. It also has a matte finish, so you won’t get any of the problems with overhead lighting common to screens with reflective surfaces.
The PC has an AMD Radeon HD 7770 graphics card with 1GB of memory, two DVI ports, one DisplayPort output and an HDMI port. It’s not a top-of-the-range card, but it achieved a fairly capable frame rate of 15fps in Crysis 2 at 1,920×1,080 and Ultra detail – we had to drop to High quality before we saw a smooth frame rate. The 500W Cooler Master power supply should give you enough power for all but top-of-the-range graphics cards – make sure you measure the case first, though, as there’s not a huge amount of room for longer cards.
The Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 AM3+ MicroATX motherboard only has one PCI-E x16 slot, which is used by the graphics card, one PCI-E x1 slot, which is blocked by the graphics card, and a PCI slot, which is both vacant and accessible. You can use it to add a TV tuner, sound card or some extra USB ports, but if you require lots of room for expansion this isn’t the PC for you. There are plenty of SATA ports, at least. They’re only SATA2, but that’s good enough for the supplied 1TB hard disk and DVD drive – you’ll run into a speed bottleneck if you want to fit an SSD later, though.
The PC has four free SATA ports, as well as space in the case for three more 5 1/4in drives and six more 3 1/2in drives. Two of the 3 1/2in slots are external versions, so you can use them to add external drive caddies or card readers, too. The case feels reasonably solid but only blocks a little of the sound from the noisy CPU cooler. There are two case fans – front and back – already in place and plenty of mounting points for extras. However, only some of these fan mounting points have fine mesh grilles to keep dust from getting in.
The processor is a 4.6GHz AMD FX-4170. It’s a decent processor for a mid-range PC and achieved a respectable overall score of 83 in our benchmark tests. The motherboard has two vacant memory slots, with the other two occupied by a pair of 1,333MHz 4GB RAM modules. The motherboard can take up to 32GB RAM.
The Scylla Elite is rather short on USB ports; there aren’t very many ports in general, for that matter. At the back are two USB3 and four USB2 ports, a PS/2 port for an older mouse or keyboard, a Gigabit Ethernet port and three 3.5mm stereo ports that can be used for 5.1 analogue surround sound. There are two more USB2 ports and 3.5mm mic and headphone ports at the front of the PC. The keyboard and mouse are a fairly standard wired Logitech set. The mouse in particular is inoffensive and comfortable to use, but the keyboard is a bit rattly.
This mid-range PC isn’t going to break any records for speed or power, but it’s a well-balanced system that can run most games and applications capably, even if you do a lot of multi-tasking or challenge it with tasks such as virtualisation. It’s a good PC for the price, but if you’re looking for expandability, it’s not ideal. Mesh’s Elite 3450–W8CS has a smaller monitor but it’s more powerful, making it a better buy if you’re on a budget.
