Peripherals Plus AXIS 1400XM
This was the first time Peripherals Plus submitted a PC to the TestLab for review, and it left a great first impression on us. This was the first time we had the chance to test an AMD 1.4GHz CPU, and the PC also came with many other components we had not seen before--like the Asus iPanel. The Asus iPanel is a Basic Smart Information Panel that provides connectivity to USB devices and easy access to system status information such as CPU/FSB/memory speeds, CPU/power supply/chassis fan speeds, CPU/power supply/motherboard temperature speeds, just to name a few. You can also personalise user configurable hot keys through the specially developed software that is also provided. The iPanel slots into a spare 5.25in drive and runs a cable to your motherboard. (Note: this panel only works with compatible ASUS motherboards.)
The Axis 1400XM shipped with an Asus A7A266 motherboard, which uses the ALi M1627 chipset. This was the most flexible motherboard of all those we looked at in this review. It supports both SDRAM and DDR-RAM (a maximum of 3GB of SDRAM and 2GB of DDR-RAM).We tested this machine with only DDR-RAM (we did, however, use this machine to test the bandwidth of SDRAM using SiSoft Sandra 2001).
The Asus motherboard also offers much in the way of expansion. It has five PCI slots, three of which were already used up--one by the soundcard and the others by the modem and network card. The Axis 1400XM also had a two-port USB connector which, was mounted to an open slot on the back of the chassis. This brought the total number of USB connectors to six.
Inside the Axis 1400XM, things were a little messy and cluttered. There were cables running around everywhere--the technicians at Peripherals Plus could have done a better job routing and tying up all the loose cables.
Inside the case we also found a Hercules 3D Prophet III with S-video and DVI--a Geforce 3 type card. The PC also featured a TDK 16xW, 10xRW, 40xCD CD-RW drive and a 16x Pioneer DVD-ROM drive. Rounding out the unit was a 40GB Western Digital hard disk drive and a Terratec 512i 4-channel digital sound card. The Terratec is a very impressive sound card in itself but it was only combined with two-channel speakers, which was a bit of a shame. The three-piece Altec Lansing speakers were good but we felt that if you were going to pay so much for a PC (and the system actually ships with a four-channel soundcard) you would expect the machine to come with at least four speakers.
The Axis 1400XM shipped with two displays. One was a 17in Samsung Syncmaster 753DF CRT monitor, which we looked at last month, and the other was a 24in Samung Syncmaster 240T TFT.
The 17in monitor was a flat screen display using shadow mask technology. It has a low dot pitch and a good on screen display. Colour was not all that vibrant but the image quality was reasonably sharp. The 24in display, on the other hand, was awesome. You can set the resolution all the way up to 1920 x 1200 and you can even use picture in picture, which means you can watch PC and video side by side. The 240T was an absolute pleasure to work with. The only down side is the price which is AU$13,990.
On the performance side, the Axis 1400XM was one of the machines to beat. It managed to score the highest in Content Creation Winstone and it was second fastest in Business Winstone. It wasn't too bad in Business Disk but it scored a little low in High-End Disk test. In Business and High-End Graphics it again produced some really high scores, scoring just as high as all the other machines with Geforce 3 cards in 3DMark 2001. In Quake 3, however, it could not match any of the Intel machines that shipped with Geforce 3 cards. In the CD-R/ DVD Playback test we could not manage to record and audio CD and play back a movie. The DVD software kept crashing on us and we even got a few blue screens up on the display.
Peripherals Plus AXIS 1400XM
Company: Peripherals Plus
Ph: 1800 00 PLUS
Price: AU$4,195
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