[section_title title=Introduction] Introduction
- Manufacturer: PC Specialist
- Model: Dominator A10
- RRP: £399 (At time of review)
The days of spending £1000 on a PC to play games and have half decent performance died a long time ago with the introduction of the Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad/Phenom CPUs having paved the way for the performance systems found in most enthusiast’s dens. Aside from the “best of the best”, not everyone has £1000-3000 or even has the need to spend such a vast amount to get what they want. Without having the initial outlay of purchasing a quad core or even hex-core CPU, AMD made recent revelations with their APU (accelerated processing unit) from AMD which combines the best of both worlds; a nifty dual/quad core CPU with on-board GPU cores with the equivalency and technology of the AMD R7 graphics series.
Enter PC Specialist; a leading retailer in building custom PC systems for your desired specification and needs. Today’s system is aimed towards the lower end of the market with components such as the AMD A10-7800K Kaveri based APU, 8GB of Kingston HyperX Beast running at a nice 2133MHz. This is complimented by a 1TB Seagate mechanical hard drive along with a lower powered but solid Corsair V350 350watt power supply. If you hadn’t guessed “or read the title”, I am of course talking about the PC Specialist Dominator A10 system which currently retails for £399. With the Windows 8.1 operating system included in the price, does this system have enough power to tempt the bargain hunter looking for a small, but might bang for buck PC? I say we find out, but first, let’s take a look at the full specification of the Dominator A10…
Specifications
Motherboard: ASUS A88XM-PLUS
Chassis: PC Specialist Chassis
CPU: AMD A10-7800K
Cooler: Stock AMD cooler
RAM: 8GB dual channel memory (2133 MHz) Kingston HyperX Beast (2x4GB)
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200RPM
PSU: Corsair VS350
OS: Windows 8.1 64Bit
