Digital Trends

Gateway 7200XL

February 7th, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Use and Testing

As we do with every new system we review, we decided to open up the 7200XL (breaking the warranty seal) to see how Gateway did with the cable management and internal cooling. There is really only one screw holding the side of the case on. Just unscrew it and flip a big green level (no joke) and the side of the case pops open. You can see in the image below, they have put a huge venting system in place over the processor leading from the front of the system. All of the cables are zip tied, but they are just sort of hanging down inside of the system versus being tucked away. But overall, the inside of the system is pretty barren and should make for a quiet and efficiently cooled atmosphere.

The system powers on by pressing the green Gateway logo on the front. We were astonished at how quiet the system sounded. We had to turn off all of the other computers in our lab in order to hear the 7200XL. And even when we were running our benchmarking tests, the system was still hardly audible. The 7200XL review system Gateway sent us came with a couple upgrades. The first upgrade included a 3.6GHz processor instead of the 3.4 GHz which comes with the base unit. The second upgrade was the monitor. The base system comes with a 17” LCD, but Gateway opted to send us their 19” flat panel FPD1940 which incorporates Fujitsu's MVA (Multi-Domain Vertical Alignment) technology which helps to make the monitor viewable from multiple angles. The FPD1940 also comes with DVI and analog VGA inputs and a native resolution of 1,280x 1024.

The included multimedia keyboard is pretty nice and does the job. It's not the best we have seen, but it should not be a deal breaker. The mouse that Gateway packages with the system is pretty bad, it utilizes a ball instead of optical technology; we didn't even think you could get a ball mouse anymore. The 5.1 GMAX speakers are not the best looking we have seen either, but they sound much better than most speaker systems shipping with other PCs. The subwoofer that comes with the 7200XL is monstrous and gamers are sure to love it. If you already have a Klipsch or a high-end Logitech speaker system, we recommend you keep and use those instead.