Review: Packard Bell iPower 7650A desktop PC

If anyone thought the acquisition of Packard Bell by Emachines founder Lap Shun Hui would usher in a new era of cheap and cheerful computers from the brand, they’d be mistaken.

The black metal case gives a feeling of quality. The front grille and two large rear fans have LEDs projecting the iPower logo. On the front, a weighty door swings open to reveal a card reader and dual-layer DVD writer. There is a lock on one side of the case but it will only help to slow down thieves, since the opposite panel can easily be unscrewed.

At the heart of the system lies a Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ ticking along at 2.4GHz. This CPU is almost two years old and, while it is still common in budget systems, we would expect a high-end Core 2 Duo model at this price. Socket 939 processors have also been superseded by AMD’s dual-core AM2 and Quad FX F1207 sockets. AMD says there will be no new processors designed for 939-pin sockets, so you’ll need a new motherboard if you want to upgrade.

A score of 5,480 in PCmark05 isn’t great for a gaming system at this price. We would expect more than 7,000 points, but the score reflects the low-end equipment. During testing, we noticed the CPU cooler made a fair amount of noise when the system was put under full load, and the iPower certainly wasn’t quiet.

Plugged into a Gigabyte K8NUSLI motherboard is 2GB of DDR400 Ram. It’s made up of two sticks, so the system runs in optimal dual-channel mode. But once again, this is old technology; DDR Ram has been superseded by DDR2.

Two identical hard disks are installed in a Raid 0 setup for data stripping, which speeds up data reads and writes. Bizarrely, Packard Bell has used two 200GB 7200rpm Barracuda hard disks to do this.

Seagate rightly brands these hard disks as entry-level models and Packard Bell would have been wise to install a single, bigger and faster disk at a similar cost as two 200GB Barracuda models. Not only would this allow for an upgrade at a later date to Raid 0, but a single hard disk is also a quieter and more energy efficient option.

Graphics are handled by two Nvidia Geforce 7600GT cards in SLI (scalable link interface) mode, each with 256MB of Ram. However, this is hardly ideal, since in SLI mode the motherboard’s PCI Express lanes slow to x8 links instead of the x16 links the cards are capable of. Again, a quieter, more upgradable and energy efficient option would have been a single ATI X1950XT or Nvidia 7900GT. Nevertheless, the 3Dmark05 score came in at 10,385, which means the system is well able to cope with the latest games.

The 400W power supply is worryingly small when you consider it has to run two graphics cards and two hard disks. Packard Bell has also skimped on audio by relying on Realtek ’97 onboard sound.

Logitech’s most basic wireless keyboard and mouse are included, while the software includes Sonic RecordNow for DVD burning and Microsoft Works 8. Windows XP Home is shipped as standard and, surprisingly, no free Vista upgrade is offered.

You could buy the components of this system for less than £800, but we wouldn’t recommend following Packard Bell’s lead in opting for two 7600GTs, nor the hard disk combination. Also, a much faster Core 2 Duo costs the same as a Socket 939 X2 4600+.

With no monitor or speakers, this system is available for £1,199 in Curry’s Digital, but we find it hard to recommend.

Related reviews:
Windows Vista
We take an in-depth look at the successor to XP

Evesham Solar Eclipse
A good performing Vista desktop PC for under £1,000

Hi-Grade Notino W5600
A budget Vista Basic notebook, but is it good value for money?

All PC reviews

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!