Chassis

Chassis

Hy-tek created a custom powder coated aluminum case for this system. This isn’t your standard plastic bezel around the screen. The front, sides, and rear of the system are all thick aluminum sheets held together by hex screws. There is zero flex in the chassis. Instead of having a separate box for the computer, Hy-Tek integrated the system components into the same chassis as the display – capable of supporting a hot P4 EE and All-in-Wonder Radeon safely no less. There was evidently a lot of pre-planning that went into the design as the CPU heatsink fits flush against the back of the case. This allows the CPU to draw fresh air from outside the case to cool it. No fancy ducting needed.

One drawback to this chassis is the lack of extra drive bays or expansion slots. You just need to decide up front what you want in your system.

Chassis rear

Chassis underside

Motherboard

Our system was equipped with the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe 875 motherboard. This is Asus’ top of the line Intel 875 motherboard. You might find other boards that may overclock better, but few that are more stable. It could use a few BIOS tweaks though, ours came with USB 2.0 full speed instead of high speed, so you would be getting 11Mb/s instead of 480Mb/s, that’s more than a little difference. It is possible that as a review unit, a previous reviewer accidentally changed that value.

CPU

Hy-Tek included an Intel 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 EE. Laugh as you may about how extreme this CPU may or may not be, but it is still one of the fastest Intel desktop chips on the market. If you think it is overkill, keep in mind that it's just barely above the minimum requirement to play Windows Media HD 1080p sources. You don't have a fast computer unless you can play 1080p WMV-HD. Before you send off that email saying that the monitor only supports 720p and that the CPU is overkill, Microsoft recommends that owners of 720p displays use 1080p WMV-HD sources when available due to the increased bitrate.

HDD

Seagate 160GB SATA HD. It isn’t the fastest, but it does the job and is quiet.

Graphics

Hy-Tek included the ATI Radeon 9800 XT, still one of the fastest cards on the market, pending any new announcements by nVidia in April. You can also order the Tek Panel with an All-in-Wonder card, which would add TV capability to this screen, something we would recommend. A HDTV option is also in the pipeline, as soon as ATI starts to ship its HDTV solution.

Optical Drive

Well, for such a sleek system, a slot loading drive like a Mac might have been just the icing on the cake. But a standard drive that is mounted on the left side of the system will have to do.

Side-view (notice off-angle color purity)

Audio

Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS. The Audigy 2 is the fastest sound card we have ever tested, and Hytek's use of the Audigy2 was a no-brainer decision. It also adds an additional Firewire port to the system.

Hy-Tek bundles a set of Bose speakers with this unit. These speakers don’t belong on this system. What would have been nice is a set of integrated speakers on the side of the system, instead of a standalone pair. To their credit though, Hy-Tek offers Klipsch speakers as upgrades.

BOSE speakers

One comment we did have is that Hy-Tek should update the manual with more detail on connecting a Tek Panel to a variety of audio sources. We'd expect a substantial number of Tek Panel owners to prefer to connect their system to their home theater system via the SPDIF output. It will be important for the manual to go over the procedure to set up the digital out on the Audigy2 ZS, and how to disable the software Dolby/DTS decoding to allow a straight bitstream output.

Keyboard/Mouse

Hy-tek bundles a generic wireless keyboard and mouse. With such a high-end system, we would have expected the best technology such as a Logitech Bluetooth wireless system, but fortunately you can always add that on later.

Keyboard and mouse

Performance

With looks like this, who cares what’s underneath the surface? If the Tek Panel were a sluggish performer we wouldn’t have minded, but Hy-Tek would have. This shows that they too share the same enthusiast spirit of not settling for a substandard system. There are cheaper components that could have been used, but they chose the best. With a 3D Mark 2003 score of 6616, this is at the top of the pack. You already know the performance of a P4 3.2 EE and Radeon 9800 XT, so there's not much to comment on.

The intangibles

A computer is much more than numbers though. The Tek Panel really is a system that can be a centerpiece to an office or living room. NBC’s show The Apprentice, features Tek Panels. If it’s good enough for the Trump, it should be good enough for you.

Even with a truly high performance computer under the hood, the Tek Panel ran silently without any heat problems. Hy-Tek has designed a clever cooling system with large slow spinning fans and many vent holes on the top of the system. We also need to mention again that the CPU fan draws cool air from outside the system.