Zt Affinity 7153Mi Budget Desktop PC Zt Affinity 7153Mi Budget Desktop PC |Variety of Information and Business

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Zt Affinity 7153Mi Budget Desktop PC


The Bottom Line

Oct 17 2011 - With a price of just $500, the Zt Affinity 7153Mi certainly has a lot to offer over similarly priced desktop systems including 8GB of memory and a large 1.5TB hard drive. Of course, this pricing and offer only exist if you are an existing member of a warehouse store that sells it. If you are not, then you need to add another $50 or so to the price. Even with this, the Zt Affinity does provide enough of an advantage to make it a compelling performance even with some minor issues such as its limited number of peripheral ports.
Pros

    Double RAM Of Similar PCs
    Larger Hard Drive

Cons

    Requires Warehouse Membership To Purchase
    Limited Number of USB Ports With No USB 3.0

Description

    Intel Core i3-2120 Dual Core Desktop Processor
    8GB PC3-10600 DDR3 Memory
    1.5TB Variable Speed SATA Hard Drive
    22x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner
    Intel HD Graphics 2000 Integrated Graphics
    Intel HDA 7.1 Audio Support
    Gigabit Ethernet
    Six USB 2.0, HDMI, DVI, VGA, 19-in-1 Card Reader
    Windows 7 Home Premium, Office Starter, Norton Internet Security

Review - Zt Affinity 7153Mi

Oct 17 2011 - The Zt Affinity 7153Mi is a desktop that is priced right at $500. The only downside to this is that it is sold through warehouse stores that require a membership. As a result, if you aren't already a member, it costs an additional membership fee which drives up the cost of the system. Even with this slight extra cost, the desktop is more than competitive with many other desktops in its price range.

Powering the Zt Affinity 7153Mi is an Intel Core i3-2120 dual core processor. This is a slightly updated version of the base second generation Core i3 processor. Essentially, it is identical in features to the Core i3-2100 processor that most of the competition is using but it has a slightly faster 3.3GHz speed over a 3.1GHz speed. For most tasks like web browsing, media viewing and productivity software, there is going to be no real noticeable difference. Only when more demanding tasks such as desktop video will the difference be felt and only maybe by a few seconds but it can add up when transcoding very large videos.

The biggest difference that the Zt Affinity 7153Mi has over most $500 desktops is the memory. The average desktop system in this class comes with just 4GB of DDR3 memory. This is fine for most users but it will impact multitasking and some more demanding tasks such as desktop video. There are a few systems that up this to 6GB of DDR3. Zt Systems packs a total of 8GB of memory which is beneficial for anyone that intends to do any of these more demanding tasks.

In addition to coming with more memory than the average $500 desktop, Zt Systems also includes a larger hard drive. The drive features a one and a half terabyte storage space. This is roughly fifty percent more storage space than the average one terabyte drive. This is especially useful for those people who like to store a large amount of digital media files on their system. There is a bit of a downside to the larger drive in Zt Systems is using a green class drive. This means that it spins at a slower rate than a traditional 7200rpm drive. It does decrease performance slightly. If this isn't enough space and you want to add more space without opening up the PC for an internal drive, there are only USB 2.0 ports available for external devices. This is disappointing as USB 3.0 or eSATA both provide near internal storage speeds for easy upgrades. The system does include a dual-layer DVD burner for playback or recording of CD or DVD media.

Like just about every budget class desktop, the Zt Affinity 7153Mi relies on the Intel HD Graphics 2000 that is built into the Intel Core i3 processors. This is an improvement over past Intel integrated graphics but it still lacks sufficient 3D performance to be used even casually for PC gaming. The one big benefit of the graphics is the ability to accelerate media encoding using QuickSync compatible software. For those that would want to add a graphics card, the system does use a slightly larger 350 watt power supply compared to many that use 300 watts of less. This opens up a few more options for adding in a dedicated PCI-Express graphics card. Still, it will be restricted to the more basic graphics cards.

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