Palicomp Carbon AMD TFT-22 review

With a budget of only £250 you’d expect a PC with a few corners cut. Palicomp’s Carbon AMD TFT-22 may lack a dedicated graphics card and doesn’t have the latest USB3 or eSATA ports, but it’s a solidly built desktop PC with plenty of room for expansion. An overall score of 90 in our benchmarks means the Carbon isn’t far behind Core i3-based PCs: its 3.2GHz Athlon II X4 640 processor may not be as fast, but its four cores help to minimise the performance gap.

Our first concern was the motherboard, as this is the heart of the PC and any future upgrades are dependent on that for support. There’s a single 2GB memory module fitted and, with three slots free you could upgrade to the maximum supported 8GB by simply adding three more 2GB modules.

There are also two free PCI slots, one free PCI-E x1 slot and an unused PCI-E x16 slot, leaving plenty of room for a dedicated graphics card and other expansion cards. Your choice of graphics card may be limited by the 450W power supply, and for some cards you’ll need a Molex-to-PCI-E power adaptor. Furthermore, putting more strain on the power supply will likely increase the noise from its fan, which is already noticeable. The existing, integrated graphics chip can play HD videos, but 3D games are out of the question.

You might want to fit an expansion card with a couple of USB3 ports and invest in a USB hub, as the Carbon is limited to only four free USB ports. Two USB ports are already taken up by the budget keyboard and mouse set, which are themselves prime candidates for upgrade: the keyboard is spongy and the mouse is too light, with only two buttons and a loose scroll wheel, and both feel like they might fall apart with prolonged use.

Room for more drives is limited by the fact that there are only two free SATA headers, even though there are plenty of drive bays free. Still, the supplied 500GB hard disk won’t need upgrading any time soon, unless you want to store a huge video, photo and music collection.

Palicomp can supply the Carbon with an LED-backlit LG 22in monitor, which costs an extra £130. This is a smart, thin flat-panel display with decent image quality – it’s not quite as bright as other new monitors we’ve seen, but colour accuracy is good and contrast was acceptable. It offers fine control over colour temperature, including a gamma control, but the preset image modes are awful, so it’s best to stick with the Standard mode.

When you’re on a tight budget, you should still be mindful of the potential for expansion in any PC you buy, so that when you have a bit more money you can upgrade the PC without wasting your initial investment. With that in mind, the Carbon is a decent choice as it has plenty of room and you don’t have to remove any existing memory in order to upgrade. However, the CCL AMD Express Box has more USB ports and a better keyboard and mouse, so it’s slightly better value for the same price.