RL Supplies Modula I5200 review

With an Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 and a miserly 2GB of RAM, RL Supplies’ Modula I5200 has a modest specification, even for a £500 PC. Despite this, the benchmark results were near the top of the £500 price category.

Its PCMark Vantage Overall score was only slightly behind that of CyberPower’s Gamer Infinity 600. The Modula I5200 performed well in the TV & Movies benchmark, which tests a PC’s ability to transcode and play video files, and in the Memories benchmark, which tests its ability to perform memory-intensive manipulations on large image and video files.

It has the least powerful graphics card in the group: a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT. This has dual DVI outputs and a TV out port. It struggled in Crysis and managed only 15.6fps in Call of Duty 4, so it’s unlikely to produce a smooth gaming experience in most modern games, even at much lower resolutions.

The 19in Hanns.G HW191D widescreen monitor isn’t among the best here, with washed out pale tones that were impossible to correct even after we adjusted the monitor’s settings. To make matters worse, the controls were obtusely labelled and counterintuitive.

The large, sturdy Gigabyte case looks good and has plenty of room for expansion. The Modula isn’t the quietest PC here, but its fans shouldn’t be overly distracting. The 500GB hard disk is large enough for most, and while the MSI P31 Neo-F motherboard can handle a maximum of only 4GB of RAM, this isn’t an immediate concern, as the 32-bit version of Windows Vista can’t even access this much.

This PC performed well and has some useful extras such as a memory card reader and a year’s anti-virus protection. More importantly, it has the best warranty in the group, covering repair and shipping costs for two years, and delivery is included in the price. This isn’t enough to offset the disappointing monitor and poor 3D performance, though. We prefer Eclipse’s Matrix i74n96GS for gaming, but Mesh’s Nero 9850HD has a better monitor and superior performance for all but games.