At under 200 bucks this kit is fairly well put together and is well suited for those have only moderate demands for their desktop computer.

Performance is suited for average computing, but can actually handle quite a lot.

The AMD Athlon 3000+ is a good value for money chip. It only costs around $100 on it’s own but offers good performance. In tests, it often performs as well as the slowest of the newer Athlon 64 range. It’s technology is slightly older, but it is good quality, with enough speed, but most importantly, good value. It’s bus speed is 333MHz, which does not rival more modern counterparts, but in real world testing it does well.

The Motherboard is an AOpen affair, which is where the name for this kit comes from. It is an old motherboard, but does offere many features, including…

• built in graphics support
• 333MHz bus speed
• AGP 4X
• ATA133
• built in LAN support
• 6 channel audio
• USB 2.0
• Socket A

The bus speed suits the chip that it comes with, but I wouldn’t hope for any overclocking ability. AGP 4X means that there is room for a good graphics card, but not the latest, suitable for some, but not new games. ATA133 should provide sufficient speed for the hard drive which is not included so you will need to get one at the same time. RJ-45 LAN support, built-in sound, USB 2.0 and the Socket A connection round off the motherboard.

The case looks cool. Many people like the flashy blue lights that come on many cases nowadays, this one comes with a few of those. If you don’t like the little lights there are ways to disconnect them, or you can get another case instead. Fans are reported as doing their job without complaint. 4 CD-ROM sized bays and 2 floppy disk sized.

The fan is a standard aftermarket one, it will do it’s job OK. However there are reports of it not cooling too well, as well as being a little noisy. Could be troublesome, but easy and cheap to replace if necessary, so not a major drawback.

Finally the standard ULTRA memory. It comes with 400MHz memory, which may sound cool, but it will run down at 333MHz along with the rest of the system. 512MB will be fine for a computer of this calliber.

The set does come with a mouse and keyboard.

Overall, a good deal. If you wanted to change any of the parts you could probably put one together on your own with the parts that you want, but this would certainly be a good start for a beginner system.

Get it online right now at the internets most trusted retailer

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Desktop Computers, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.