Gateway DX4831-03 delivers a good deal of power and offers a host of features for your usual purposes and, as a general purpose PC, is hard to beat. However, its gaming performance is indifferent at best, and therefore, it is not for you if you are a hard gamer.

The 3.2 GHz, Core i5-650 processor of Gateway DX4831-03 is really more advanced than the 2.88 GHz, Core i5-750 of Micro Expres’s MicroFlex 75B, its chief competitor among top 10 general purpose mainstream PCs. It is because of this processor giving 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory with an ability to overclock to 3.46 GHz, that Gateway DX4831-03 has been able to click an excellent 131 points on the WorldBench 6 suite of tests, at par with MicroFlex 75B’s 132.

Gateway DX4831-03’s 1TB storage leaves MicroFlex 75B’s 150 GB, nowhere in comparison. However, in graphics performance, it is not as good. Its nVidia GeForce GT220 graphics card could deliver a frame speed of 51.7 fps, while the ATI Sapphire 4890 graphic card of MicroFlex 75B gave a much better 82fps on PC World’s Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark conditions of 2560 by 1600 resolution at high quality.

Gateway DX4831-03 comes with a Blu-ray/DVD reader as well as a DVD burner-beautifully concealed under two folding panels on the front case. Inside, there are three screw-fitted 3.5 inch bays should you want to install additional hard drives or other devices. The motherboard itself has three connectors for three new PCI devices: one PCI Express x8slot and two PCI Express x4 slots.

There is no dearth of connectivity options either in Gateway DX4831-03. There are a multiformat card reader and two USB ports on the front case. On the top of the case, near the tray, there are two more USB ports. On the rear, besides six more USB ports, there are two eSATA ports, one FireWire 400 port, 1GB Ethernet port, plus an HDMI port a DVI port and a VGA port on the graphics board. Surprisingly, there is no USB 3.0 support on the system but that hardly causes any problem.

The input devices in included Gateway DX4831-03 are nothing much to boast of. Although beautifully designed to go with the system’s glossy looks, neither the mouse nor the keyboard goes beyond the normal functions offered by their generic counterparts. The only new feature is extra buttons on the keyboard for raising or lowering the system’s volume.

On the whole Gateway DX4821 gives a high level general performance. Though a bit costlier than its chief competitor Micro Express MicroFlex 75B, it gives you your money’s worth with a 1TB hard drive and the Blu-ray support along with so many connection options. If you are looking for a high performance, general purpose, non-gamer PC, it is just for you.