We’ve been talking a lot about the resurgence of desktops in recent weeks, and now’s the time to introduce another one. The CG1330 Essentio is aimed at AMD devotees and users who want a mix of regular home computing, productivity and gaming. It’s not a hardcore setup, but on the up side, we find this desktop promotes energy conservation, which is a good thing.
What we like most about the standard CG1330 configuration is the CPU, which is a new AMD Phenom II X6 1035T six core processor. This variant is designed to reach optimal performance on low voltage, so it only takes 1.2v to clock at 2.6Ghz. Based on the efficient Phenom II X6 architecture, that’s quite ample computing power for most users, even if it’s not top of the line like the new Intel i7-980X chips.
As you can tell, the CG1330 is designed to be an all-rounder, doing well in multiple arenas. Like other desktops we’ve examined lately, it too continued the trend of massive storage, with up to 6TB possible across three HDD bays.
Similar to its relative the CM5675, the CG1330 also has the ASUS Q-fan and Energy Processing Unit built in for high power efficiency and quiet operation. However, this machine does cater more to the gaming crowd, so the motherboard can take up to 16GB DDR3 1333MHz memory, and the default graphics card is a capable EAH5750 with 1GB GDDR5. This card can run every game release currently out in high detail. While the CG1330 has all the multimedia and storage facilities of the CM5675, it’s a little more aggressive, to wit the case design, which we’re told was inspired by the armor worn by knights in both European and Asian traditions.
For an overall good desktop as an anchor PC for the home, this one is a good choice, it comes with Windows 7 and some of the basics you need to get started, like a keyboard and mouse, and again, being a desktop the old parts swap is more than possible a few months or a year down the road.