The accompanying monitor, a 19in widescreen Hannspree XM-S New York, has a resolution of 1,400x900. The 768MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO graphics card is the most powerful in the £500 group. An unusual feature is a WiFi/E header, which you can use to connect an ASRock 802.11n wireless module, which costs around £8. Like Mesh's Nero 9850HD, the i74n96GS has both optical and co-axial S/PDIF outputs and a total of eight USB ports. It has six SATA ports, three of which are free so you can add additional hard disks to the five empty 3?in bays.
You can install a maximum of 16GB of DDR2 in four slots or 4GB of DDR3 in two slots.
The ASRock motherboard is unusual because it's the only Intel board we've seen that can handle either DDR2 or DDR3 RAM. These are to prevent mishaps in transit rather than to stop upgrades, but removing the glue from the delicate components required a considerable amount of force. Upgraders won't like the large gobs of glue that have been daubed over every connection in the case. The large vents may help cooling, but they did nothing to block the high-pitched fan whine that started every time we put the system under load. Eclipse's Matrix i74n96GS has a flimsy case with a side panel that was difficult to refit because it flexed so much.