In any competition, there has to be a loser. This month, that displeasure must go to the Western Digital 160GB Caviar AV. On paper, it shouldn't be the slowest drive around, with sustained reading and writing speeds of between 60MB/sec and 70MB/sec. Its average access time isn't particularly poor either, but it still took last place in the Gimp image editing test and loading Crysis. The 160GB Caviar AV is one to avoid, even if you can't afford a big drive.

• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007

• AG Neovo E-W22 - TFT monitors
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 - Graphics cards
• NZXT Tempest - Cases
• Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ - Graphics cards
• AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition - Processors
• SilverStone Crown CW03-MT - Cases
• Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP - TFT monitors