The Palicomp Alpha Fury is a great looking PC, thanks to the Cooler
Master K350 case, that's also incredibly well balanced and capable of
making the most of any task.
As we've come to expect from PC's at this price, a Core i5-3570K lies
at the heart of the PC. This model has been overclocked from the
standard 3.4GHz to a respectable 4.4GHz. With an overall score of 123 in
our benchmark tests, this PC is certainly fast enough for any job.
Palicomp has fitted 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM in two modules. Again,
that's as much as most people with ever need, but should you have an
interest in particularly memory-intensive tasks, there are two vacant
memory slots ready for upgrading.
It's gaming that this PC is particularly well suited to, thanks to
the 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7850 graphics card. It's an excellent gaming
graphics card, achieving smoothly playable frame rates of 73.9fps in
Dirt Showdown running at Ultra quality at a resolution of 1,920x,1080
and 29.7fps in Crysis 2, running using Ultra quality settings at a Full
HD resolution. The Crysis 2 score is borderline smooth, but drop the
detail settings a little and you'll get much smoother frame rates and
still have gorgeous-looking game.
We're pleased to say that the quality components continue inside the
case, with an Asus P8Z77-V LX2 motherboard. This will be familiar to
anyone who regularly reads our PC reviews. It's a generally excellent
motherboard with two PCI slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI-E x16
slots, one of which is occupied by a graphics card and the other of
which actually runs at x4, so it's better for expansion cards. The
graphics card also blocks one of the PCI-E x1 slots, but there's still
plenty of room for expansion.
The motherboard also has four SATA2 ports and two SATA3 ports. One of
each is in use, connected to the DVD drive and 1TB hard disk
respectively. There's plenty of room to add more storage when you want
it, too, with six vacant 3.5in drive bays and two unused 5.25in bays.
The drive cages are fixed in place, though, so the very longest graphics
cards on the market could be a very tight fit indeed, even though the
powerful-but-garish 750W gold CIT PSU could easily power them.
The case's front panel provides one USB port and one USB3 port, which
is great as this fast connector is arguably more useful at the front of
the PC, and 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. At the back, you'll find
another six USB ports, two of them USB3, along with a pair of PS/2 mouse
and keyboard ports, Gigabit Ethernet and three 3.5mm audio ports for
5.1 analogue surround sound.
The supplied mouse and keyboard are budget Cherry set. They're not
much to look at, but they're comfortable to use, despite the odd
angularity of the mouse. The keyboard’s one of the better low-cost ones,
with a decent layout and a responsive feel.
It's good to see a large monitor, with the 24in, Full HD Asus VS247H.
It's got a decent range of inputs, too, with HDMI, DVI and VGA
providing enough for you to hook up your PC and any other devices, such
as a games console.
We measured its contrast ratio at an excellent 1,144:1, which was
borne out in our image tests, as we could see fine detail in even the
darkest parts of our test photos. Uncalibrated, the monitor isn't as
good as some others and we measured it as only producing 87.5 per cent
of the sRGB colour gamut. We didn't see any particular colour problems
in our tests, although the display is a little cold to look at.
All-in-all, Palicomp has put together a very powerful PC and the
Alpha Fury is brilliant for games and Windows applications alike. It's
well-built and was very quiet in our tests, too. While the 24in display
is good to see, it's not as good as the 23in Iiyama IPS screen that
comes with the Chillblast Fusion Sprite.
If you want a monitor with your PC, the Fusion Sprite is a slightly
better choice, although you'll have to sacrifice a little gaming
performance; if you have a monitor you can already use, the Alpha Fury
is a great buy for the PC only.
| Part Code |
IVY12 |
| Review Date |
8 Jun 2013 |
| Rating |
|
| Processor |
Intel Core i5-3570K
|
| Processor external bus |
100MHz (DMI)
|
| Processor multiplier |
x44
|
| Processor clock speed |
4.4GHz
|
| Processor socket |
LGA1155
|
| Memory |
8
|
| Memory type |
PC3-12800
|
| Maximum memory |
32GB
|
| Motherboard |
Asus P8Z77-V LX2
|
| Motherboard chipset |
Intel Z77
|
| USB2 ports (front/rear) |
2/6
|
| eSATA ports (front/rear) |
0/0
|
| Wired network ports |
1x 10/100/1000
|
| Wireless networking support |
none
|
| Case |
midi tower
|
| PCI-E x1 slots (free) |
2 (1)
|
| PCI-E x16 slots (free) |
2 (1)
|
| Free Serial ATA ports |
4
|
| Free memory slots |
2
|
| Free 3.5in drive bays |
6
|
| Hard disk model(s) |
Western Digital Blue (WD10EZEX-00RKKA0)
|
| Interface |
SATA3
|
| Graphics card(s) |
2GB AMD Radeon HD 7850
|
| Graphics/video ports |
2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
|
| Sound |
Realtek ALC887
|
| Sound outputs |
5.1 line out, headphone, microphone
|
| Speakers |
none
|
| Supported memory cards |
none
|
| Optical drive type(s) |
DVD+/-RW +/-DL
|
| Viewable size |
23.6 in
|
| Screen model |
Asus VS247H
|
| Native resolution |
1,920x1,080
|
| Screen inputs |
HDMI, DVI, VGA
|
| Keyboard |
Cherry KU-0556
|
| Mouse |
Cherry M-5400
|
| Operating system |
Windows 8
|
| Operating system restore option |
Windows disc
|
| Warranty |
three years RTB
|
| Price |
£700
|
| Details |
www.palicomp.co.uk
|
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