Time UltraStation XP3200

[DR]

A thumbs up all round, I have to say. Providing they look into the memory timings issue (or you change them yourself) and you don't get a horrid mouse like I did, the UltraStation XP3200+ is about as much of a powerhouse PC as you can buy in this country at the moment, for under around £1800.

Read more : http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD02MTI=

[Austin]

Well XP3200+ is nice but if you can afford that kind of money the P4 800FSB route makes loads more sense. As always you pay a big premium for th top kit with only marginal perf gains ... the rapid devaluation will always hurt too.

FX5900 is also a little bit of a waste, nice performer but the Rad9800 or 9800PRO are both better and a good deal cheaper too! At least there isn't a GF4MX440, Rad9200 nor FX5200 in there though.

The DVD Writer is also pretty poor and better & cheaper options are readily available. '+'&'-' is what you want, not '-'&'RAM'. Giving you a 2nd DVD-ROM drive is wasteful as well, on-the-fly hasn't been truly feasible nor preferable for a good while, maybe that is better with DVD writing but I doubt it.

Wireless keybd and mouse are nice and pretty but not energy efficient nor generally good for gaming (or around children who'll run off with them).

Modem? Are you seriously telling me someone's going to spend the best part of £2000 and then use snail Internet connections?

BTW I am nit-picking and will gladly take one ... for half the price LOL!

[fondie]

Nice review, unbiased editorial, i like! A proper end user opinion, like picking up on how annoying a crappy wireless mouse can be rather than just spouting specs and numbers (though they are useful to) = a top review in my books! Where was the 5 pages of slagging pre-confugered systems though? Especially one from such a big brand! Well done Rys

As for the actual machine, and in fact pre-configured machines in general, you can look at them and see they were built my marketing men, keen to put the biggest spec numbers down, because they know that's what the non-techie looks at when buying a pc. I know if i was building a system with that kind of money that i might sacrifice the very latet processor for a nice logitech cordless desktop mx keyboard and mouse combo and not go for the largest capacity hard drive in favour of a better looking case and a pioneer dvd writer. It's the little things that really effect a pc, the average Time PC whatsitsname system user isn't going to need 250Gb of hard drive space but may well notice a nice shiny case and will certainly appreciate a user friendly keyboard and mouse that they will use for many hours, although i fully appreciate that it may well be difficult to convince them of that in a newspaper advert.

[Rys]

Originally posted by Austin
Well XP3200+ is nice but if you can afford that kind of money the P4 800FSB route makes loads more sense. As always you pay a big premium for th top kit with only marginal perf gains ... the rapid devaluation will always hurt too.

FX5900 is also a little bit of a waste, nice performer but the Rad9800 or 9800PRO are both better and a good deal cheaper too! At least there isn't a GF4MX440, Rad9200 nor FX5200 in there though.

The DVD Writer is also pretty poor and better & cheaper options are readily available. '+'&'-' is what you want, not '-'&'RAM'. Giving you a 2nd DVD-ROM drive is wasteful as well, on-the-fly hasn't been truly feasible nor preferable for a good while, maybe that is better with DVD writing but I doubt it.

Wireless keybd and mouse are nice and pretty but not energy efficient nor generally good for gaming (or around children who'll run off with them).

Modem? Are you seriously telling me someone's going to spend the best part of £2000 and then use snail Internet connections?

BTW I am nit-picking and will gladly take one ... for half the price LOL!

I agree with the DVD-R issue, they could have bundled something nicer.

But as far as XP3200+ goes, in nForce2 Ultra 400 with nice memory (you get great Corsair), it's just as fast as anything P4 wise, bar the 3.2.

FX5900 is a decent power users card, and without knowing what Time paid for it, you can't really say any other card is cheaper. Cheaper to us in retail maybe, but they are a massive OEM, who knows what's cheap for them.

Modem? Some of us can't get broadband, regardless of how much money we have, just down to where we live. I can't, so it'd be useful to me. Plus, it doesn't hurt to just leave it alone and never use it.

It's worth the money, and believe me, I pondered long and hard before coming to that conclusion. You can't really put together anything like the same spec for half the price.

Rys

[Stoo]

Nice review there Rys

Time in good PC shocker! Blimey, whatever next lol

[Rys]

Originally posted by fondie
Nice review, unbiased editorial, i like! A proper end user opinion, like picking up on how annoying a crappy wireless mouse can be rather than just spouting specs and numbers (though they are useful to) = a top review in my books! Where was the 5 pages of slagging pre-confugered systems though? Especially one from such a big brand! Well done Rys

Thanks

Originally posted by fondie
As for the actual machine, and in fact pre-configured machines in general, you can look at them and see they were built my marketing men, keen to put the biggest spec numbers down, because they know that's what the non-techie looks at when buying a pc. I know if i was building a system with that kind of money that i might sacrifice the very latet processor for a nice logitech cordless desktop mx keyboard and mouse combo and not go for the largest capacity hard drive in favour of a better looking case and a pioneer dvd writer. It's the little things that really effect a pc, the average Time PC whatsitsname system user isn't going to need 250Gb of hard drive space but may well notice a nice shiny case and will certainly appreciate a user friendly keyboard and mouse that they will use for many hours, although i fully appreciate that it may well be difficult to convince them of that in a newspaper advert.

You have a couple of valid points The keyboard, mouse, case and DVD-R are all places they could improve, but they did alright on the whole.

Nice effort from a company we usually associate with less than perfect quality.

Rys

[Austin]

Originally posted by Rys
Nice effort from a company we usually associate with less than perfect quality.

Agreed. I'm still a little surprised they didn't go with a 256MB FX5200/5600 or something. As already said it is about the target audience and there's certainly plenty worse out there that's for sure. There's plenty of people who buy a top £2000ish system and keep it for 5 years+ ... then shell out the same again for another top-end pre-built system.

Anyway, all good points Rys.

[joshwa]

considering modem's probably cost time about £1 each, they may as well stick em in - or is the modem built into the motherboard? //edit - looks like it's a pci one

disappointing case :/

They are keen to sell you extra warranty cover, both in terms of duration and features, including things like on site repair and a reload CD. Erk. Why don't all systems, even the cheapest boxes, come with a CD and instructions for reloading the system from it? Why does that cost £99 from Time? I'm slighty perplexed that a system should have to go back to base, with all the costs and downtime that entails, when for the price of a pressed CD or DVD and sheet of paper, the user can happily do that themselves.

they normally put the restore info on a hidden partition on the hard drive. so that if you ring up needing reinstall you can just "ghost" / re-do it from this hidden partition.

also another thing you might want to note about time, is that return to base has to be paid by the customer, i think it's about £35 both ways. customers can arrange their own collection if they want but it adds extra hassle i think, and may not be cheaper.

my dad works for time at their main factory - tech support - (near burnley, lancashire) so if you want me to find anything out let me know

Josh

ps - I think 3 years extended warranty / tech support is about £199. basic technical support without paying for extra cover normally costs £1 per minute on the phone, unless you have extra cover / gold support i think it's called. - did you have to pay for your support call?

re: the BNC / Component connections on the back of the monitor, any graphics card should be able to supply the correct signal with a 15pin DSUB to 5-connector BNC cable from the likes of Maplins for about £15-£20. My Radeon 9000 works a treat with said cable (as did my GF4 ti4200) with my Dell / Sony 21" Trinitron - although changing from a normal cable to the BNC connectors did not really seem to improve the image quality as much as going from a GF4 (gainward) to a Radeon 9000 (saphire) did...

pps - really nice review, really cool to see hexus reviewing a complete system. it's something i'd like to see more of, inc. laptops

[Shad]

Great review

Who'd have thought that Time of all people would build a decent PC!

[Rys]

Originally posted by www.josh.org.uk
*snipped for brevity*

The install image is on the 2nd partition of the hard drive, as mentioned in the review, but what I want to see is the media. A physical, hold in my hands, CD.

You can quite easily delete the install image without really knowing what it is, then you are screwed. Was really hoping you wouldn't have to pay £99 for a pressed CD or DVD and a sheet of instructions, even if it does come with more years on your support or whatever.

As for the BNC info, I didn't know you readily got VGA to BNC composite cable convertors, that's good to know You've got a legit, easy method of using two machines with the F900P in that case.

I paid for the call, yep. Worth it to see what happened, thanks to a really old issue of PC Pro for the inspiration. RTB costs shouldn't be picked up by the customer in the 1st year, if that's the only warranty cover you get from a vendor. Would be nice if they paid the courier fees, since it's bound to be cheaper than sending out an engineer on call.

Glad you liked the article, it was fun to write. Again, nice to see Time putting in a good showing. We've got another full box review coming up this week I think, and Tarinder notes, quite rightly, that it's hard to buy badly these days. Everyone, even the traditional bad apples, seem to be shipping out quality boxes.

Rys

[acidrainy]

Great review!! I have to admit it, I thought I was going to be reading something that would be based around slagging Time to high heaven

I was almost taken back when I saw corsair in the spec sheet!

One thing I agree on, is your points with the mouse. That would drive me completely insane. The mouse alone, if using a demo machine in store, would probably put me off buying the whole computer. Still, nice to see such an admirable bundle from a company that until this review, I wouldn't touch with a barge pole

Well done Time, just fix that mouse would ya

[Bindibadgi]

Originally posted by Austin
...blurb...

XP3200 issue - P4s cost way more wonger at the end of the day, but it probably would have been a better performer for a top end kit. HOWEVER, from a retail perspective - to have dolby 5.1 ONBOARD is a massive saving, as well as LAN and other nforce2 goodies. AMDs are cheaper and give "comparible" performance too.

5900s are VERY nice cards. Have you actually used one? Ive just had the privilege to play with one the last week and i was most impressed with it. nVidia are more widely known in the public eye then ATi (imo) so more people will go for brand names = faster.

Remember: Joe Public + computers = idiot.

DVD-RW another gimic. Not supprised it wasnt something like a Sony or Pioneer, as also i wasnt supprised about the crappy software they supply with it.

Modem - yes, people still use modems. Youd be supprised how many people havent got a clue about anything else, or dont want to change for loss of their email address etc.

The case doesnt supprise me either. Time should really get with it and sort this out.

Incedently - what was the PSU rating? and manuf.?

I did detect a hint of "Argh! its a TIME machine NOOoooo" in that review Rys but all in all twas very good reading

Supprised you awarded it 8 though, i thought it would get around 6 or 7 at most.

[walibe]

I dunno, Times got such a bad reputation. I brought two PCs from them and they were nothing but problems... build my own ones now.

[Austin]

Originally posted by Bindibadgi
More blurb ()

Yeah I know there's a very good saving to make with AMD as do most remotely informed people ... BUT firstly the top AMD's are over-priced and the 800FSB CPUs really do begin to pull away significantly from the Athlon's XP rating. Secondly like you said about the GF-FX5900, most average Joes want the brand name so once again I was surprised they didn't opt for Intel (even a 3.06ghz 533FSB just for the brand name).

Sure 5900's are nice cards but still inferior to the Radeons and the FX are way more expensive. As always opinion is split but I'm in no doubt (for the moment). As said it really does depend on what deals the likes of Time can cut for large volumes.

Originally posted by Bindibadgi
... build my own ones now

Isn't it great! Well most of the time...

[Bindibadgi]

When i finally get my Radeon thru the post ill reply and tell u which is better Im still mightily impressed with the 5900s power though.

As for building your own, i physically find it hard to use prebuilt machines cause im so curious to tweak it and fiddle with the innards to my own way. Its out of habit now.

[mrk]

not bad!