Palicomp Phoenix i5 Supreme review

Palicomp’s Phoenix i5 Supreme is a relatively inexpensive PC base unit with a powerful Intel Core i5-2500K processor and a whopping 8GB of RAM plus a Blu-ray reader. These are excellent components but Palicomp has made some obvious savings on the case and peripherals to keep the overall price down.

The case is a simple black and silver box with a plain grey interior. Some of the mesh grilles that cover unused drive bays are prone to bending at the least pressure. We were pleased to find two case fans, neither of which is loud enough to make more than a faint rushing sound with the side panel fitted. There’s also plenty of room for upgrades with three unused 5 1/4in drive pays and space for six more 3 1/2in drives, one of which can be used for card readers and the like.

The Core i5-2500K processor has been overclocked to 4GHz. It’s not the fastest speed you can push either the motherboard or the processor to, but it performed well, with an overall score of 112 in our tests. The processor is installed on an Asus P8Z68-V LX motherboard. It has six SATA ports, two of which support high-speed SATA3. Both of the latter are free – two of the SATA2 ports are connected to a 1TB hard disk and the Blu-ray drive. This means that the Supreme is well equipped for both storage and entertainment.

The motherboard also has two free PCI-E x1 slots, two PCI-E x16 slots and three PCI slots. If you add a large graphics card to the primary PCI-E x16 slot, the x1 slot below it will be blocked, but that still leaves one free. Serious upgrades may require a replacement power supply, as the supplied 450W PSU only has a couple of spare Molex connectors.