Computer Planet is a custom builder with a good pedigree, but when challenged with a £500 budget, we were surprised what we ended up with - and not in a good way.
The basic tower is a Vista Home Premium machine with dedicated NVIDIA graphics, 3.0GHz dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, but no monitor or peripherals.
More than £500 is a lot to spend without some serious hardware behind you - this system has plenty to offer, it's just not the value package we had hoped.
Ugly casing
The cheap nature of the budget COLORSit case is an unfortunate housing.
Ugly, weak and without any cooling fans, we were surprised that the otherwise excellent components (including 2GB premium RAM from Geil) were given such a sub-standard home.
The red and green lights on the front are bulky and unattractive whilst the front USB2 ports are hidden behind a flap that needs to be placed off the floor or beyond a desk edge to actually be lowered enough for you to access them!
Strong performance
Sadly, the Asus P5K SE motherboard and 3.0GHz dual core Intel CPU is let down by a poor cooling fan from Speeze that's noisy, probably being overworked by a lack of cooling elsewhere.
The Speeze QuadroFlow VIII cooler has a nice solid feel and has one of the toughest, but easy to use, clamping mechanisms around, but it's far too noisy and causes a lot of vibrations.
What we did get out of the machine though is excellent pace, with a good motherboard, CPU and RAM combination - Windows Vista scored the unit at a very respectable 5.0 on the Windows Experience Index.Even the GeForce 8500GT card performed well, easily getting past the 3,000 mark in 3DMark.
Not a budget gaming system
Gaming is possible here, but the latest and greatest creations are beyond it. Overall, some good components here, but it should be a whole lot cheaper.
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wells3838
October 19th 2011
2. I bought this computer for myself a few months ago and I am still loving every bit of it! It's very fast for what I need it for and very quiet too! I've never used Computer Planet before, but I have to say that they can have my business any day! They shipped it to me very fast and it arrived in great condition, right on time. Its still running like it just came outta the box too. Thanks for a great deal Computer planet! I'll be back!
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feefee
August 23rd 2010
1. I have been warned about this company only after I brought a computer from them, and I must say they live up to there bad reviews online, the customer service is awful, the computer I received worked for 10 minutes I turned it on and after 10 minutes is crashed, when I rebooted it did not work.
I emailed them to let them know that the computer was not working, as they don't have a phone line, on the first day I got it and spent 10 days over emails with there support staff, only to find they gave up on it in the end, and asked me to return it for repair.
it then spend over 16 weeks in repair, and every time I emailed them, all i got was it is being tested and will be ready soon, days later it back being tested again, after loads of emails and complaints.I finally got the computer back, with some parts that had been downgraded to lower value items, the computer still does not work, and Im afraid to sent it back, and god knows how long they would take to repair it and what will I get back, I never really write reviews about companies, however this company I must warn you, I have been reading a few more reviews online about this company and wish I had taken them into account please be warned, if you do buy a computer from them and it works think yourself very lucky indeed as there are alot of people out there like me that are not so lucky.
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