Dell Dimension E520
Rental/day 85.47yuan Rental/week 273.50yuan Rental/month 341.88yuan +17% VAT	Processor	Intel Pentium 805，2.66GHz
	Memory	1GB DDR2 533
	Hard drive	80GB SATA
	Media drive	DVD
	Screen	17"
	Network interface	10/100M Auto
	I/O	1-DVI ,S-Video,Vga-Out ,7xUSB 2.0,IEEE1394

                  

TheDimension E520 may look like its cousin the E521 on the outside, but insideit's a different beast. It has a faster processor, more memory, a bigger harddrive, and a dedicated graphics card that makes it a more desirable propositionfor a wider range of activities.

Forthe higher price, you get above-average components--including a 200GB harddrive and dual optical drives (a dual-layer DVD burner and a DVD-ROMdrive)--and reasonable performance. The system contains a 1.86-GHz Intel Core 2Duo E6300 processor and 1GB of RAM, and it achieved a respectable WorldBench 5score of 105. That's well above the average mark posted in our roundup of cheapPCs, but it's 29 percent lower than the 148 turned in by the Micro ExpressMicroFlex 66B.

Still, the E520 is not for gamers. Its nVidia GeForce7300LE graphics board generated hit-or-miss graphics performance; our testgames were playable, barely, at 1024 by 768 resolution. For example, at aresolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels, the system achieved frame rates of 24 framesper second on our Doom 3 test and 32 fps on our Far Cry test.

Like most sub-$1000 PCs, this system doesn't leave youmuch room for expansion. Housed in a standard Dell Dimension midsize towercase; our test configuration provided a single internal 3.5-inch bay, and twoexpansion slots (one PCI and one PCI Express x1).