Watford Electronics Perfecta 4500DDR

At £499 this PC is a very good deal.

Price: £586.33

Manufacturer: Watford Electronics

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Verdict

Pros:

The cheapest Pentium 4 PC we've encountered.
Cons: Performance is lacking.
Overall: A very cheap Pentium 4 system that might appeal to those who don't want an AMD-based PC, but it's not as fast as we'd expect.

Lars Goran-Nilsson, Personal Computer World 04 Nov 2002

Watford has managed to squeeze a 2GHz Pentium 4 processor into a £499 PC. It doesn't take long to figure out how Watford has put together this bargain, as the inside of the case is fairly empty.

Watford has supplied a reasonable 256MB of DDR SD-Ram; 32MB of this has been allocated for graphics but if you need less you can change it in the Bios.

The microATX motherboard doesn't take up a lot of space, making it feel even emptier. The board is based on the Via PM266 chipset which has integrated graphics, resulting in pretty poor 3D performance.

There is an AGP slot so you can upgrade from the integrated graphics chip and, if you want to play any games on this, we would seriously recommend doing just that. One of the PCI slots is free as the other is taken up by the modem.

The main storage is a 40GB Seagate hard drive, which is reasonable given the price of this PC. You also get an LG DVD-Rom drive, but no CD writer, however you can upgrade to a 40-speed drive for £40.

The keyboard and mouse could be better: the keys are awkward to use and the mouse lacks a scroll wheel. A set of standard stereo speakers (which may differ from the ones shown in the picture) and a reasonable 17in AOC monitor complete this system.

Performance wasn't great with a Sysmark 2002 score of 148, only five points faster than the cheaper Multivision reviewed here. If you're after a cheap P4 PC this might suit you, but we'd recommend taking a look at the Multivision before you make up your mind.

Specifications: