This machine is beautiful. Hardly a sentence you could start most reviews with, but in this instance it's certainly true. It's in all honesty one of the best examples of system building that we've ever had

Inside the garishly painted Lian Li case, you'll find a selection of the best components money has to offer. The Intel Core 2 Q6600 is capable of some serious performance boosts thanks to the water cooling

Taken out of the context of video editing, this machine looks like little more than a cynical excuse to extract money from unsuspecting pockets using clever design.

Sony has always been led by design. It's what makes us punters pay that little bit extra, instead of going for some ugly bit of kit that does pretty much the same job. The Vaio RM1N, you'll be unsurprised to hear, doesn't break with this tried and tested formula, although it does challenge our notions of the PC

Choosing a video-editing platform from Apple's current desktop range is a conundrum. The Mac Pro towers do provide 'best of class' performance but for everyday video editing it's a case of overkill.

Just how important is the CPU in a gaming rig? Apparently not all that crucial, according to ZooStorm. Thanks to the inclusion of a budget-orientated version of Intel's Core 2 Duo chip, this system risks an immediate pummelling from the more powerful competition

Is it really too much to ask for an affordable gaming system built from carefully selected components from a major UK PC manufacturer? You know, the sort of system a clued-up enthusiast might cobble together if they were given a similar budget to play with

It seems almost ridiculous to think that, by releasing the LX2000, Philips is taking a punt in the dark. But, in AV terms, the company surely is.Media PCs, in general, should have made more of an impact by now.

Rig building by the numbers. At first glance, that pretty much sums up the approach PC Specialist take. Aesthetically, the Apollo V-80 certainly delivers little by way of surprise and delight

Hardly fashionable or funky, Mesh has done a pretty good job over the years of offering excellent value for money from a UK PC builder. It's a sort of home-grown alternative for those who can't face being just more grist for Dell's mighty mill

New memory technologies are thankfully rare beasts. The last was DDR2, and to say its reception was lukewarm would be a massive understatement. In truth it was awful, at least until the operating frequency was upped to a level that actually justified its release

This Intel Core 2 Duo E6750-powered PC is very nearly as good as performance computing gets. Given the asking price, that's a reassuring thought for mere mortals who desire a powerful box but would rather not blow thousands on a PC.

Apple quietly upgraded its entry-level Mac desktop with Core 2 Duo chips this month. It was a long overdue bump up. The new clock speeds are 1.83GHz and 2.0GHz. It carries forward exactly the same format as before; the same shell, ports, graphics card, and drives

You may not have heard of RL Supplies. That's no surprising, given that it relies on word of mouth and reviews in the media to bring in business. It's been going for ten years though, so the company must be doing something right.

While Apple was stealing headlines with its latest iMac design, it also quietly upgraded the Mac mini with a Core 2 Duo processor, thereby completing the integration of the faster Intel chips across its whole Mac line-up

We have two methods to gauge the impact of a new Mac. The first is to talk to customers at our local Apple reseller. The second is to set up the new Mac in the office and wait for our colleagues' reactions. In both cases, the new iMac seems like a winner

This is a small form factor machine for those that might need to lug a PC around a bit - or those that are after something a little less intimidating. Of course, it's Shuttle that is synonymous with small form factor PCs, but those that have built a system inside one of that company's barebones systems will be acutely aware of how loud such machines can get when under full load

More and more PCs are being sold pre-overclocked, and it's not hard to see why. Not only is it desirable to squeeze extra performance from your machine, but the job is now arguably easier

The £600 - £800 desktop market is competitive and you can see marked differences in performance for just a few pounds either way. One such PC that excels in this price bracket is the Chillblast Fusion 6320 OC P35

NEC may not quite share the same spotlight as Dell when it comes to business machines, but it's been doing solid business all these years, and the latest PowerMate shows that it has enough to give the other big guns something to think about

Computer shops, once the domain of the over-zealous and ill-informed, have all but been replaced. The Internet was the first to stick the boot in, now it seems that thanks to PCs like the Medion 6486, big-name supermarkets are going to finish the job

The £500 price tag is clearly the big attraction in this PC, which boasts a feature-packed version of Vista, 2GB RAM, a 250GB SATA hard drive and a powerful graphics card. This latest Zoostorm from the Versatile range has a lot going for it

Cyberpower is a well-established manufacturer of gaming PCs, and its Media Centre HD represents the company's push into the high-definition arena. Question is, should Cyberpower have stayed in its comfort zone?

HSC Dark Whisper review: High Speed Computers says that its aim is to produce the computing equivalent of a Bentley. Like that classic British manufacturer, HSC builds every PC that comes out of its small production facility by hand

Any sight of the word 'Pentium' either makes us think of ugly boxes coated in 'Intel Inside' decals, or piping-hot Prescotts with haughty heatsinks. Our collection of processors enter and leave PCs with more frequency than a Dell returns department