Zoostorm 62-4409 review

Zoostorm hits the top of our chart with one of the fastest WorldBench 6 scores we’ve seen. With the brand-new 3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 under the hood, the Zoostorm 62-4409 not only racks up 130 points in our benchmark but still manages a saving of £150 compared to the competition.

Despite its compact case, the Zoostorm 62-4409 offers two external 3.5in drive bays – and there’s room for another inside – a built-in memory card reader and a pair of front-facing USB ports. Inside, the Foxconn G31MX-K motherboard is equally compact, while the 4GB allocation of RAM fills both the available memory slots – if you have plans to upgrade here, you’ll need to start from scratch.

The Zoostorm 62-4409 is supported by the company's own-brand 500W power supply.

For general use the Zoostorm 62-4409 offers superb performance, but compromises have inevitably been made in order to hit that £599 price tag. It’s the only PC here to come with a 19in monitor and, while the Hanns-G XM New York is a popular and well-made display, size does matter – you lose not just screen space but pixel resolution when you compare this model to the 22in displays supplied elsewhere in the chart.

Likewise, the Zoostorm 62-4409’s 320GB hard drive will be adequate for most users, but it’s significantly less capacious than the 500GB or 750GB disks you’ll find in the more expensive PCs in this price bracket.

But the most significant compromise made by Zoostorm is the relative lack of graphics processing power. The Zoostorm 62-4409's 384MB nVidia GeForce 9600 GSO is certainly capable of gaming, but you’ll have to keep the display resolution low to enjoy a demanding game, such as Crysis.

Chart ranking: £501-£750 desktop PCs

1. Zoostorm 62-4409
2. Arbico Elite 8685 RDX
3. PC Specialist Apollo 4850 Pro
4. CyberPower Gamer Infinity GT

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