Evesham Solar Storm review

Evesham Solar Storm Review

Reviewed by: Rory Reid

Reviewed on: 19 February 2007

Features
The driving force behind the Solar Storm is a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 CPU. This is joined by a pair of 512MB DDR2 667MHz DIMMs atop a Foxconn P9657AA-8EKRS2H motherboard. Also inside is a slightly better-than-average Nvidia GeForce 7900GS graphics card with 256MB of dedicated memory. All in all it's a slightly above-average specification that's only hindered by the fact its RAM only just meets the minimum requirements for a Vista Premium Ready PC.

Thankfully it's easy to add more RAM. There are two unoccupied slots on the motherboard, and since it's a Vista machine you can use a spare USB key as extra memory, thanks to the excellent ReadyBoost feature. 

The PC's upgradeability in other areas is a mixed bag. There's plenty of space inside for installing new drives: three empty 3.5-inch bays and two empty 5.25-inch drive bays for adding extra hard drives and optical drives respectively, but there are no spare molex power connectors from the power supply unit (PSU). It only provides a feeble 350W of power, which is great for helping to avert global warming, but rubbish if you intend to add lots of new components.

The remainder of the Solar Storm's components reiterate its do-it-all intentions. There's a 320GB Western Digital hard drive that provides ample room for around 300 hours of video, (you get a dual-layer DVD rewriter for backups), and there's a hybrid analogue/digital TV tuner card, which will let you watch one digital or analogue channel while you record another.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Solar Storm is its use of Windows Vista Home Premium edition. This version of the operating system includes the Media Center interface, which gives you easy access to video, audio, images and TV shows. Usefully, Evesham has provided a couple of infrared blaster cables, which you can use to control your existing set-top-boxes via the bundled Media Center remote control, or the accompanying wireless keyboard and mouse. 

But our favourite part of the Solar Storm bundle is the Viewsonic VG2030wm monitor. It's a widescreen 20-inch model with a native resolution of 1,680x1,050 pixels. Not only does it have very good picture quality, its widescreen aspect ratio lets you work with two document windows side by side, and it's also ideal for gaming, since many forthcoming Vista games will run in widescreen by design. We also like the fact that its height is adjustable and the circular base allows easy left-to-right swivelling.

Unfortunately, the PC's audio capabilities aren't particularly good. You get a set of Creative I-Trigue 3220 speakers, which consists of two stereo speakers and a subwoofer, but their sound quality is average at best and they don't take advantage of the PC's surround-sound capabilities.  

Performance
The Solar Storm turned in a fairly solid performance. It achieved 5,928 in PCMark 2005, which is in line with what we expected from a machine of its specification. It's quicker than the Hi-Grade DMS Xtc2_02 Media Center machine, which has a slightly slower processor.

In gaming tests, the Solar Storm performed well. We set F.E.A.R. to our default test resolution of 1,024x768 pixels and cranked the detail levels up as high as we could, barring the full-screen anti-aliasing feature -- it ran at an impressive 46 frames per second. In 3DMark 2006 it scored 3,804, which is a solid score.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide