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The second of the three Phenom II-equipped £650 PC on test this month is Mesh’s 920 Nero. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s one of the fastest PCs in this entire Labs, and is beaten only by the other Phenom II machines: Eclipse’s Andromeda AP92n98GTX and Mesh’s £800 Matrix II 940 CS. The mini tower case supports only micro-ATX motherboards but is deep enough to accept a full-length PCI-E graphics card, which provides plenty of scope for upgrades. For now, the 1GB ATI Radeon 4670 is a capable graphics card with an HDMI port as well as DVI and VGA connections. It didn’t quite manage 30fps in Call of Duty 4, so it won’t play the latest games at the highest quality settings. However, only Eclipse and PC Nextday’s £650 PCs were significantly better for games. Like the other PCs in this category, the Nero lacks an eSATA port, although its nine USB ports provide ample scope for attaching external storage drives. There are also six SATA ports, four of which are unused, so there’s plenty of potential to use some of the three free 3?in bays and two free 5?in bays to add more storage or extra optical drives. A useful card reader occupies one of the 3?in bays, and those who like a tidy desk will appreciate the cordless Logitech mouse and keyboard. The 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium is noteworthy because the motherboard supports 8GB of RAM and there are two free memory slots, so you’re free to take advantage of them. Although the 20in Iiyama ProLite monitor isn’t the biggest in this group, it has the best image quality and the same 1,680×1,050 resolution, so you won’t have to sacrifice any desktop space. The brightness and contrast are good and the backlight is even.
The Matrix II 920 Nero is an excellent all-round PC. The one-year RTB warranty is a weak area compared with the onsite and collect-and-return cover from PC Nextday and PC Specialist, but the Nero’s specification makes up for it. It’s a deserving award winner.
