Asus Essentio CG8350-06 DesktopDesign and Features
The CG8350-06 is a fairly large tower desktop PC. As such, the desktop has plenty of interior room, including spots for two more internal hard drives, another optical drive, and 3 SATA ports (one of which is 6Gbps) for the internal drives. There are two CrossFireX-compatible PCIe x16 slots and two PCI slots on the Asus motherboard. (CrossFireX is ATI/AMD shorthand for linking two or more graphics cards together on the motherboard in order to get better 3D performance or support for multiple monitors.) It's notable that the PCIe slots are both physically x16, but only one is electrically x16 (the other is x4). That means you won't get the full bandwidth from the second graphics card slot, however unless you like to run 3D games at very high quality levels on a 30-inch panel with 2,560 by 1,600 resolution, you're not likely to notice the difference between a x16/x4 and a x16/x16 graphics card setup. One of the positives of the CrossFireX setup is it will support at least four monitors simultaneously with two graphics cards, regardless of the x16/x4 setup. Sadly, the included 400W power supply (PSU) isn't suited to running even a single AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card (AMD's current top-end card: AMD recommends at least a 750W PSU for one 6990 card and 1,000-1,200W for two); you'll have to pick something more pedestrian, like an ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card for your system. There's only one 6-pin supplementary power cable for graphics cards on the PSU, so the Radeon HD 6990 wouldn't work in this system anyway. Adding a graphics card or two is easy, but rewiring your PC with a new power supply is fairly involved. You'll have to rewire the entire desktop: graphics cards, motherboard leads, hard drives, and optical drives. Some of the wiring snakes through the chassis, complicating what would have been a 10-minute graphics card upgrade session. This desktop would have scored better if Asus had included at least a 750W PSU with support for high-end graphics cards, or even better, a 1000W PSU.
The CG8350-06 is a fairly large tower desktop PC. As such, the desktop has plenty of interior room, including spots for two more internal hard drives, another optical drive, and 3 SATA ports (one of which is 6Gbps) for the internal drives. There are two CrossFireX-compatible PCIe x16 slots and two PCI slots on the Asus motherboard. (CrossFireX is ATI/AMD shorthand for linking two or more graphics cards together on the motherboard in order to get better 3D performance or support for multiple monitors.) It's notable that the PCIe slots are both physically x16, but only one is electrically x16 (the other is x4). That means you won't get the full bandwidth from the second graphics card slot, however unless you like to run 3D games at very high quality levels on a 30-inch panel with 2,560 by 1,600 resolution, you're not likely to notice the difference between a x16/x4 and a x16/x16 graphics card setup. One of the positives of the CrossFireX setup is it will support at least four monitors simultaneously with two graphics cards, regardless of the x16/x4 setup. Sadly, the included 400W power supply (PSU) isn't suited to running even a single AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card (AMD's current top-end card: AMD recommends at least a 750W PSU for one 6990 card and 1,000-1,200W for two); you'll have to pick something more pedestrian, like an ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card for your system. There's only one 6-pin supplementary power cable for graphics cards on the PSU, so the Radeon HD 6990 wouldn't work in this system anyway. Adding a graphics card or two is easy, but rewiring your PC with a new power supply is fairly involved. You'll have to rewire the entire desktop: graphics cards, motherboard leads, hard drives, and optical drives. Some of the wiring snakes through the chassis, complicating what would have been a 10-minute graphics card upgrade session. This desktop would have scored better if Asus had included at least a 750W PSU with support for high-end graphics cards, or even better, a 1000W PSU.
- Asus Essentio CG8350-06 Desktop Specifications
- Type Gaming, Mainstream
- Processor Family Intel Core i7
- RAM 8 GB
- Storage Capacity 1000 GB
- Graphics Card Intel HD Graphics 2000
- Primary Optical Drive Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW
- Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
