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Eclipse Galaxy A10 R7-250 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £500
inc VAT

This is one of the best budget PCs we've seen, but buy it without the monitor

Specifications

3.4GHz AMD A10-7700K, 8GB RAM, 21.5in 1,920×1,080 display, Windows 8.1

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The motherboard has HDMI, DVI and VGA ports, so you’ve plenty of display connectivity options. The back of the motherboard also has two USB3 ports, four standard USB ports, three 3.5mm analogue audio outputs for 5.1 surround sound and two PS/2 ports. There are another two USB ports at the front panel, along with mic and headphone ports.

Unfortunately, the supplied monitor isn’t as impressive as the rest of the PC. The Samsung S22C150N looks the part: it’s a 21.5in widescreen flat panel with a matt display and a resolution of 1,920×1,080. Unfortunately, you can’t tilt the screen at all to get a better viewing angle and it has only a VGA port to connect to your PC, rather than the superior DVI or HDMI digital connectors. It’s not a great monitor. Images looks pale and washed out, and the screen didn’t do well in our contrast test, with a contrast ratio of 331:1 and an unusually poor black level of 0.74cd/m2.

Eclipse Galaxy A10 R7-250

The monitor did no better in our colour test, with our calibration device rating it as having covering just 81.5% of the sRGB colour gamut. At least the supplied Microsoft keyboard and mouse are pretty good as far as budget input devices go. Although neither is top of the range and they keyboard is a little spongy, we’d happily keep using them as our regular mouse and keyboard.

The ability to combine the processor’s graphics with a dedicated card really gives this system some serious punch when it comes to 3D gaming. The VGA-only monitor isn’t really up to snuff, but you can always get the system without a display for £430 and buy a good quality budget monitor such as the £85 AOC e2250Swda. If you’d rather buy a full system at once, then the Mesh Matrix A10 7850K – CS or Best Buy-winning Palicomp AMD Kaveri Evolution are both good alternatives to this Eclipse PC.

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Basic Specifications

Rating****
ProcessorAMD A10-7700K
Processor external bus100MHz (HyperTransport)
Processor multiplierx34
Processor clock speed3.4GHz
Processor socketFM2+
Memory8
Memory typePC3-10600
Maximum memory32GB
MotherboardAsus A88XM-A
Motherboard chipsetAMD A88X

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear)2/4
eSATA ports (front/rear)0/0
Wired network ports1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking supportnone

Internal Expansion

Casemidi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free)1 (0)
PCI-E x16 slots (free)1 (0)
Free Serial ATA ports4
Free memory slots2
Free 3.5in drive bays2

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s)Seagate Barracuda (ST1000DM003-9YN162)
InterfaceSATA3

Graphics

Graphics card(s)2GB AMD Radeon R7 250
Graphics/video portsHDMI, DVI, VGA

Sound

SoundRealtek ALC887
Sound outputs5.1 line out, headphone, microphone
Speakersnone

Removable Drives

Supported memory cardsnone
Optical drive type(s)DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Display

Viewable size21.5 in
Screen modelSamsung S22C150
Native resolution1,920×1,080
Screen inputsVGA

Other Hardware

KeyboardMicrosoft Wired Keyboard 400
MouseMicrosoft Basic Optical Mouse v2.0

Software

Operating systemWindows 8.1
Operating system restore optionWindows disc

Buying Information

Warrantyone year RTB
Price£500
Detailswww.eclipse-computers.com

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