Arbico’s QC3578 is a powerful PC with good all-round features and performance. Housed in a black CiT Jupiter system case, it’s appearance is sensible enough for work, but edgy enough to keep gamers interested. See Microsoft Windows 8 review.
Inside, the PC is powered by an Intel Core i5-3570 processor running at 3.4GHz with Turbo boost up to 3.6GHz available. This quad-core chip delivers plenty of power for all but the most demanding of users, but note that it’s not the enthusiast ‘K’ version found in some competing systems. Of the systems equipped with an SSD, Arbico’s system performed slightly behind the competition in PCMark 7. Visit 8 hot features in Windows 8.
While overclocking isn’t recommended for most users, this PC is one system that could make use of it as the installed MSI Z77A-G45 motherboard comes with built-in automatic overclocking, while a huge third-party CPU cooler has been installed which would aid in such speed-boosting endeavours. See also Group test: what's the best PC for £750?
However, the motherboard has other useful features, including fast smartphone charging via USB as well as USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps via the Intel Z77 Express chipset.
A 1TB hard disk is included, although the system boots from an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD which delivers a significant boost in responsiveness. Its 120GB size gives it a distinct advantage over systems sold with 60GB SSDs which quickly become full over time.
The Arbico QC3578 Pro comes with an MSI-branded AMD Radeon HD 7850 graphics card. It copes easily with most games at reasonably high graphic settings, and is the second fastest card in this group test, being pipped at the post by the slightly faster-clocked version used by Eclipse.
Arbico has neatly side-stepped the mess of Windows 8 touchscreen problems by opting to supply the system without a screen. This is probably a wise decision as there are currently no reasonably-priced touch screens available which adequately support Windows 8. When comparing the price of this system, be sure to take into account the price of anyw display if you need one.
At 16GB, the system comes with plenty of RAM along with a Blu-ray combo drive to make its £750 price tag more competitive.
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