A Windows 10 desktop PC with all the trimmings
It used to be a running joke among technology journalists that while Moore’s Law said everything would get twice as powerful every two years, Sod’s Law said a decent PC would still cost £1,000. As quickly as hardware improved, software would demand more of it. You can pay less for a PC, but only if you compromised.
These days, you can get a great all-round PC for about £650, so that’s progress. But what if you chose to spend £1,000 anyway? You’d get something like the Z170 Performance GTK6. To start with, there’s a powerful quad-core 3.5GHz Core i5 processor from Intel’s new Skylake series, with a Turbo Boost speed of 3.9GHz. This has been overclocked to 4.6GHz, which means the PC has an extra cooling fan, but this is of high quality and therefore runs quietly. The result was exceptional performance in our multitasking and video-processing tests, which is good news if you need it for both everyday use and more ambitious work. For the sake of comparison, a 4.4GHz Core i7 system was only a tad quicker.
With such a powerful main processor, Scan might be forgiven for skimping on the graphics card. But instead you get the more-than-capable 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, which has also been overclocked. Again, that means additional cooling, but this is mostly silent and never annoyingly loud. You can easily play 3D games at high-quality settings and up to 4K resolution. That may not be so important if you never play games, but it means this PC will work for years without falling behind the needs of the latest multimedia software. A 256GB SSD is included to store Windows and your programs for high-speed access, plus there’s a high-quality 1TB hard drive for the rest of your files.
Because Scan builds PCs to order, you can tweak most aspects before you buy. In our configuration, the two blank bays at the top of the case were filled with a DVD writer and a comprehensive memory card reader, featuring slots for just about every kind of memory stick you could think of, as well as two USB 3.0 ports. There are two more USB 3.0 ports on the front, while two on the back support the even faster USB 3.1. You also get the tiny new USB 3.1 Type-C. This all adds to the sense of a PC that won’t date quickly.
Inside, there are two empty memory slots, and the standard 8GB of DDR4 RAM can be increased right up to 64GB. There are three spare SATA3 connectors for extra drives, two of which will fit inside the case, in addition to the DVD; and an M.2 slot for the fastest SSDs. Beside the graphics card are a fast PCI-Express x16 slot, a smaller PCI-E x1 and two standard PCI slots.
The only upgrade you might need to think about immediately is Wi-Fi, which isn’t standard on most desktop PCs; options start at £16. If you do want to add or replace components later, Scan will do it for you under its three-year warranty: you just pay the cost of the parts and transporting the machine, and they cover the labour. The first year of the warranty is on-site, so if anything goes wrong an engineer will come out to fix it.
You don’t have to spend a grand to get a usable desktop PC, but if you want one that’s going to last for years to come and still be worth passing on to friends and family when you replace it, the Z170 makes the most of your money.
VERDICT
A great selection of components makes this PC as futureproof as you’d expect for this price.
SPECIFICATIONS
3.5GHz Intel quad-core i5-6600K • 8GB memory • 256GB SSD • 1TB hard drive • Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 • 6x USB 3.0 ports • 2x USB 2.0 ports • Multiple memory card reader • Gigabit Ethernet port • DVI port • HDMI port • 3x DisplayPort • Windows 10 Home • 471x200x430mm (HxWxD) • Three-year warranty