Introduction
You've saved some pennies by not spending everything during the Christmas melee and now want to replace that ageing PC with something new?
A budget of £500-£750 for a base unit brings a number of interesting options into play. You could opt for an AMD-powered machine with a 790FX motherboard and Phenom II X4 CPU. Then there's Intel's P55 chipset and associated Core i5/i7 chips.
But wait, because the pricing of Intel's finest desktop combination, X58 chipset and Core i7 chips, has dropped to an extent where the purchase can be justified on several grounds, including, of course, performance.
Focussing on value more than features, every motherboard manufacturer has a 'budget' X58 board to go along with the £200 Core i7 920 chip that's the only sensible choice from the LGA1366 range.
We take a look back at X58 with the sub-£150 ASUS P6T SE and tell you if it's a good fit for a mid-priced system.