Advent Firefly FP9004 review

£320
Price when reviewed

We see plenty of cheap PCs in the PC Pro Labs, but the majority that manage to creep beneath the £300 barrier do so by using low-powered Atom processors. That’s fine for a basic nettop, but if your needs extend to more processor-intensive applications what you really want is a full-fat, dual-core alternative packing Windows 7. Step forward the Advent Firefly FP9004.

Its £278 exc VAT price puts it firmly in ultra-low budget territory, but you wouldn’t know it from using it. The glossy black chassis is big enough to house the necessary cooling for a proper processor, and Advent has opted for Intel’s 2.6GHz Pentium Dual-Core E5300. It’s at the low end of the scale, but it still performs around three times faster than a dual-core Atom 330 in our application benchmarks.

The Firefly partners this CPU with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard disk, and its overall score of 1.11 shows it’s more than capable of coping with the daily needs of a family or home office. The trade-off for this is that it’s nowhere near as compact as some other cheap systems we’ve seen – the redesigned Asus Eee Box, for example.

Advent Firefly FP9004

It is flexible, though. It can stand upright or lie on a desk, and the top edge forms the main air vent grille. The sleek front panel, split down the centre by a white LED, makes it look more expensive than it is, and we’d almost go so far as to call it mildly stylish. It isn’t too large – around 300mm tall and 320mm deep – so it will tuck away on the corner of a desk where a full desktop chassis might stick out. It isn’t exactly built like a Lenovo but the finish feels sturdy enough, with only the flimsy DVD drive flap posing a potential weakness.

Open it up and you’ll see everything is rather snug inside; Advent has used every inch of the available space. The 250W power supply sits at the foot of the chassis, beneath a microATX Foxconn motherboard, while a stock Intel cooler sits atop the CPU. No expansion cards are installed as standard, but there are PCI Express x16 and x1 slots free should you want to add a graphics card or TV tuner. However, the single RAM slot is filled, so there isn’t much scope for boosting performance.

Warranty

Warranty1 yr return to base

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity320
RAM capacity2.00GB
Screen sizeN/A

Processor

CPU familyIntel Pentium
CPU nominal frequency2.60GHz
CPU overclocked frequencyN/A
Processor socketLGA 775

Motherboard

MotherboardFoxconn G31S
Motherboard chipsetIntel G31
Conventional PCI slots free0
Conventional PCI slots total0
PCI-E x16 slots free1
PCI-E x16 slots total1
PCI-E x8 slots free0
PCI-E x8 slots total0
PCI-E x4 slots free0
PCI-E x4 slots total0
PCI-E x1 slots free1
PCI-E x1 slots total1
Internal SATA connectors2
Internal SAS connectors0
Internal PATA connectors0
Internal floppy connectors0
Wired adapter speed100Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory typeDDR2
Memory sockets free0
Memory sockets total1

Graphics card

Graphics cardN/A
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards?no
Graphics chipsetIntel GMA X3100
DVI-I outputs0
HDMI outputs0
VGA (D-SUB) outputs1
DisplayPort outputs0
Number of graphics cards0

Hard disk

Hard diskWestern Digital Caviar Blue
Capacity320GB
Internal disk interfaceSATA/300
Spindle speed7,200RPM
Cache size8MB
Hard disk 2 make and modelN/A
Hard disk 2 nominal capacityN/A
Hard disk 2 formatted capacityN/A
Hard disk 2 spindle speedN/A
Hard disk 2 cache sizeN/A
Hard disk 3 make and modelN/A
Hard disk 3 nominal capacityN/A
Hard disk 4 make and modelN/A
Hard disk 4 nominal capacityN/A

Drives

Optical driveHT-DT-ST GH40F
Optical disc technologyDVD writer
Optical disk 2 make and modelN/A
Optical disk 3 make and modelN/A

Monitor

Monitor make and modelNone
Resolution screen horizontalN/A
Resolution screen verticalN/A
ResolutionN/A x N/A
Pixel response timeN/A
Contrast ratioN/A
Screen brightnessN/A
DVI inputsN/A
HDMI inputsN/A
VGA inputsN/A
DisplayPort inputsN/A

Additional Peripherals

SpeakersN/A
Speaker typeN/A
Sound cardRealtek HD Audio
PeripheralsNone

Case

Case formatDesktop
Dimensions93 x 320 x 300mm (WDH)

Power supply

Power supply rating250W

Free drive bays

Free front panel 5.25in bays0

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream)6
PS/2 mouse portyes
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports1
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports0
Modemno
3.5mm audio jacks3

Front ports

Front panel USB ports2
Front panel memory card readeryes

Mouse & Keyboard

Mouse and keyboardAdvent mouse & keyboard

Operating system and software

OS familyWindows 7
Recovery methodRecovery partition, burn own recovery discs

Noise and power

Idle power consumption40W
Peak power consumption65W

Performance tests

Overall application benchmark score1.11
Office application benchmark score0.88
2D graphics application benchmark score1.40
Encoding application benchmark score1.15
Multitasking application benchmark score0.98

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