Asus Essentio CM1730-05

Asus Essentio CM1730-05

The Asus Essentio CM1730-05 ($569.99 at Best Buy) skirts the gray area between cheap desktop PCs and more mainstream multimedia-oriented computers. It's got a six-core AMD Phenom II X6 1065T processor and 8GB of memory, two things that used to be unheard of at this price point. They give the system some raw number-crunching power, but ultimately other systems with lesser stats are able to outperform it. The CM1730-05 is a decent desktop with some potential for people who like to tinker, but for the general public other choices are better. The CM1730-05 is a sleek tower PC with a fairly featureless front panel. The spot where you'd normally find the optical drive is a blank panel with the power button embedded in the top, so the optical drive is in the lower bay (where you'd actually find the second optical drive in most tower desktops). Also notable is that the bay's eject button is hidden - you need to push its front panel to eject the tray for the DVD burner. The system is fairly well put together, with decent-quality plastics and metal. The system has a conveniently placed pair of USB 2.0 ports on the top, along with audio jacks and a slim media card reader. In the back, there are six more USB 2.0 ports, VGA, DVI, HDMI, S/PDIF (digital audio), audio, Ethernet, and a mouse/keyboard PS/2 port.