Evesham Quest A620 with FX-60

Looking a little closer...

The Evesham Quest A620 has a bulky feel, but then when has a desktop replacement been any different? Aside from its bulkiness, we really like the look of this machine, especially the brushed aluminium finish on the lid and the glowing blue digital clock on the front edge. Along with the clock, there are controls for volume along with basic media playback buttons too.

The blue theme from the clock is also carried through to the power button and the indication lights for Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll lock and hard drive activity. That gives this machine an air of coolness. However, it's a shame that the bi-coloured LEDs on the bottom of the screen don't continue the cool blue theme.

The keyboard is a full-sized one that comes complete with a separate number pad - the touch is generally pretty good and responsive. The responsiveness of the power button could be improved, however, as you need to hold it down firmly for a couple of seconds to get the machine to turn on.

On the left hand edge of the chassis, Evesham has integrated a 10-in-1 media card reader below the lone PCMCIA expansion slot. It supports just about every memory card type you're likely to use, but the one exception seems to be support for XD memory cards.

There are two speakers on the front edge, one on either side of the keyboard and a small subwoofer on the bottom of the chassis next to the memory and hard drive enclosures. The speakers are good so far as laptop speakers go, but don't expect them to set the world on fire. They're adequate for listening to music, gaming or watching a film while away from your main desktop computer but they do sound a little tinny at times.

There is a wide range of connectivity options on this machine, including PS/2, Parallel, Serial, Modem, Gigabit Ethernet, PCMCIA, S/PDIF out, two mini IEEE1394a Firewire ports and four USB2.0 ports. Along with that there are display output ports for DVI and TV-Out. The two video-out ports in the right hand corner on the back of the chassis are optional, dependant on whether you've opted to install a mini-PCI TV Tuner or not.

Noise:

With all of the power and high end hardware installed in this system, there has to be a drawback. The fact that the system is propped up off the desk with some rather big rubber feet, we weren't surprised to find that this machine is loud. During normal use, this machine is loud, and it gets louder when you're playing games.

There are four fans on the bottom of the machine with two of those dedicated to cooling the CPU. The third is responsible for cooling the GeForce Go 7800 GTX, and the final fan is above the memory slots. The final fan looks to be feeding the hard drive enclosure with a little bit of airflow to ensure the hard drives don't overheat.