Saturday 9 May 2015

The 15 best Android games of 2015

Want the greatest Android games on your phone? This is the go-to list you'll need.

It's always been assumed that Android isn't a great place for mobile gaming. While that used to be the case in the early days of Android development, Google's mobile OS certainly gives Apple's iOS game catalogue a run for its money.

Usually offered at a cheaper price, or with an alternative "freemium" model based on in-app purchases (denoted as IAP in our list), Android is a hotbed of gaming fun. However, it's a minefield out there, and there are clones aplenty, so to help you work out which ones are worth downloading, we've rounded up 15 of the best Android games available to download in 2015.



The Witcher Battle Arena (Free with IAP)



The MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre is exploding on PC, and CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher Battle Arena brings that competitive scene to Android.

It’s fun, fast, and you could easily sink hours upon hours of play into it without even trying.

If you’re itching for League of Legends or DotA 2 on mobile, this is the solution.

Clash of Clans (free with IAP)



Clash of Clans has taken the world by storm, so much so Supercell can afford to have Liam Neeson advertise it during the Superbowl. And there's a reason for why everyone the world over has become hooked on its brand of resource management and social gaming - it's so perfectly formed for dip-in play.

You know when a clash is going to go down against a rival clan, so you and your buddies can form up and build a solid defence whilst also forming a powerful offence. It's tactics, management, and a way to keep in touch with friends or make new ones in stranger-filled clans.

Supercell is certainly doing something right - it's probably why one member of the PCPro team is addicted to it.

Monument Valley (£2.49 - Forgotten Shores expansion £1.49)



Created by UsTwo Games, Monument Valley is like playing through M. C. Escher artwork. It's truly a beauty to behold, and the mind-bending platforming puzzles are just fantastic fun as you scratch your head wondering what to do until a eureka moment occurs and everything falls into place.

It may not be the longest game around, and you may find little reason to revisit once completed, but you won't ever come across a game as beautiful and pleasing as this again.

Dudeski (Free)



Ever play SkiFree on MS Dos or Windows 3.1? Well Dudeski will bring back haunting memories of that angry robot chasing you down.

Built like an endless runner, Dudeski sees you careening down the slopes while a violent avalanche is hot on your tail. It's tense stuff, but you can overcome it by weaving around coloured slalom posts, making use of jumps, and gaining speed on icy pools.

Collecting pine cones on your way allows you to unlock shortcuts or pay for bonuses to increase your high score, and if you grab onto a low-flying helicopter you'll be whisked away to a bonus level.

Spread across four regions of the mountain, Dudeski comes with an awful lot despite its free price.

Sudoku (Free)



No fuss, no nonsense, Jamie McDonald's Sodoku does exactly what it says on the tin.

Split across Easy, Normal, Hard and - for the brave - Extreme, puzzles, there's plenty to keep you going if you don't fancy paying. For those who do want to extend the challenge, McDonald has been incredibly favourable, offering up an extra 400 puzzles on a tier of your choice for just 59p.

Thanks to integration with Google Play Games, you can compare your scores and averages against friends, and even track your own number-crunching progress. And, because it's designed in accordance with Google's Material Design ethos, Sudoku is slick to use.

Definitely the clearest way to flex your brain during your morning commute.

Weak Warriror (Free)



Playing more akin to a rhythm-action game than and all-out RPG, Weak Warrior has you bashing ghosts and goblins until you die.

Fixed to a spot, tapping the left or right and side of the screen swings your warrior's sword left or right respectively. Enemies rush you, and you need to dispatch them swiftly, as you can only take a couple of hits before you die. As you progress, new enemies approach, each with their own attack and run patterns, meaning that timing is key. Make a wrong swing and you could see yourself defenceless for precious seconds!

Incredibly replayable, wonderfully addictive, Weak Warrior is just a fantastic game for killing a minute or two on the bus or at the stop.

Ridiculous Fishing (£1.99)



Created by the folks at Vlambeer, Ridicuous Fishing is, as its name alludes, completely absurd.

Your task is to help Billy fish the depths of lakes and seas around the world. Dropping your lure, you have to weave around all manner of exotic fish until you reach the full length of your reel. Then, on the way up, you have to catch as many fish as you possibly can.

Once done, Billy flings up his catch into the air whereby you need to shoot down every single one to cash in on your latest fishing escapade. With this newfound cash you can buy new weapons, perks, longer reels, and really anything you want.

It's silly stuff, but that's what makes it just so fantastically fun.

Threes (£1.31)



Created by Asher Voller, Threes is a simple puzzle game that challenges you to match up number tiles in pursuit of a high score.

The game end when you fill up the 4 x 4 grid - but the catch is, you can shift only an entire row or column of tiles at a time, so you can't simply move individual pieces to where you want them.

You can also only match together two identical numbers, or the blue "1" and red "2" tiles to create white "3" tiles. And, with every movement, a new piece joins the board, so you need to keep matching and removing the tiles as quickly as possible.

It sounds confusing, but it's one of those games where, once you start playing, you'll grasp it in moments. After which, thanks to the game's charm and character, you'll quickly be sucked in and won't be able to put your phone down.

Free clones may exist, but they all lack the polish, charm, and character that Threes has in spades.

Desert Golfing (£1.19)



A calmer take on the "endless runner", Desert Golfing sees you flicking a golf ball into a never-ending series of procedurally-generated, single-screen holes.

The graphics aren't much to look at, but the simplicity of Desert Golfing's environment offers a zen-like experience that's relaxing as well as enjoyable.

99 Bricks: Wizard Academy (Free)



Imagine if Tetris involved physics. In Weird Beard’s 99 Bricks Wizard Academy that’s exactly what you have to deal with.

While there’s some vague story thrown in around having to go to a wizard school to learn spells and best foes, the real joy of 99 Bricks is in the building.

Using Tetrinomes that fall from the sky, you need to create a stable base and build yourself a tower reaching up to the heavens. You’ll have to be careful where you place bricks as every brick has weight and momentum to account for.

Some bricks are made of ice, others of wood and stone. Icy bricks are slide around and are a serious hazard to stable structures, whereas stone pieces lock everything around them in place.

If that wasn’t enough of a worry, the higher you build your tower, the stronger winds become, meaning a stable footing is essential if you want to build your own Tower of Babel.

Super Hexagon (£1.99)



The simplest games are often the most addictive, and that’s the case with this high-octane action title. You control an arrow that moves around a hexagon in the middle of the screen, and it needs to be navigated safely through twisting, approaching walls.

You’re tasked with lasting 60 seconds against the encroaching barriers and, if you do, they change shape and speed up – which ramps up the pressure. The techno soundtrack matches its rhythm with the game’s pulsating walls. Few games are infuriating and addictive in equal measure, but Super Hexagon nails it – and that keeps us coming back for more.

Crossy Road (Free with IAP)



We live in a world where there are few truly original ideas come along, but even if Crossy Road is just a combination of Frogger and any number of endless runners, it's so much fun we honestly couldn't care.

With pleasingly colourful and chunky voxel visuals, Crossy Road just requires you to tap the screen to jump forward, swipe left to jump left, and swipe right to jump right. Your only goal is to progress your way through an innumerable amount of hazards. It's just so simple.

In app purchases exist to allow you to buy alternate characters from a huge roster, but if you don't fancy owning any extra characters you don't have to buy them - who knows, you may even win them through in-game rewards.

Rymdkapsel - (£2.49)



Aside from its confusing name, Grapefrukt Games' minimalist strategy game positions itself as "meditative" space station building game. Instead of focusing on selecting units and mounting attacks on enemies, Rymdkapsel is all about building the best base possible.

Things start off slowly, but as you increase the size of your base and begin to fend off incoming attackers, Rymdkapsel becomes a game of resource management and exploration.

Thanks to a tetrinome building method, where the next shape you can use is dictated to you in the upper corner, you'll easily piece together a tight knit base. You want to grow your base as large as possible, but in doing so you need to ensure it's properly defended.

Games can go on for hours if you plan well, but with a quick save function you won't lose any progress if you decide you've had enough for one day.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft - (Free, with IAP)



Hearthstone is Blizzard's take on the trading card battling game and, much to the annoyance of your timetable and wallet, it's managed to produce something rather spectacular.

Taking on the role of Warcraft heroes and villains, you'll enter into epic duels, summoning allies and beasts to help defeat your opponent. It's incredibly simple to pick up and Blizzard regularly rolls out new expansions, packs and challenges to keep things fresh. You can also play against PC and iOS opponents so you can challenge all of your friends wherever they are.

unlike many other card battlers out there, Hearthstone doesn't aim for your wallet, allowing you to play without paying a dime if you so please. Trouble is, you'll become so sucked in you'll fork over some money eventually.

Two Dots - (Free)



A quirky take on an incredibly simple match-two premise, Two Dots is unbelievably cute and incredibly addictive.

Set as a tale of assisting two adventurers explore the world, Playdots Inc. has created 285 levels of pure simplicity. Each level requires you to remove a set amount of dots from a screen, or meet a certain criteria in each level. To do so, you need to start matching dots!

Dot matching is very straightforward, done through simply drawing a vertical or horizontal line through a set of the same colour dots to link them and remove them from play. More dots fall from the top of the screen, and this match-two puzzler begins to feel very similar to the likes of Bejeweled as more dots tumble from above

A-List: the best tech you can buy in 2015
(PLZ COMMENT IF I MISSED ANYTHING)

Whether you're looking for a new laptop, server, desktop PC, digital camera - or pretty much anything IT - you should make the PC Pro A List your first stop. See below to find our best buy in each category, along with up to three alternatives that might be a better choice for you or your business depending on your needs.

Tablets



Compact tablet

Full-size tablet

Smartphones



Budget Smartphone

Premium Smartphone

Laptops



Mid-range laptop
Enthusiast laptop
Budget laptop

Business/executive laptop

Ultrabook

Desktop PCs



Budget PC
High-end PC
All-in-one PC
Peripherals



Wireless router

Network storage
Scanner
Ebook reader
Monitors



Budget monitor
Premium monitor
Specialist monitor
Printers



Inkjet printer/all-in-one

Office inkjet printer/all-in-one
Personal laser
Business Laser
Network devices



Rack server
Pedestal server
Security appliance
Storage appliance

Video editing
Backup/Storage
Accounting

Productivity

Web development
Graphics/Design

Photo editing

Audio Production

Antivirus
Network monitoring

Network backup

Friday 8 May 2015

Windows 10 will launch on 23 July 2015:


Windows 10 will be released on Thursday 23 July, according to PC Pro's predictions.

How can we be so sure? Well firstly, Microsoft has confirmed a summer 2015 launch for Windows 10 in the UK and 189 other countries. Then, in mid April, AMD's president and CEO Lisa Su inadvertently revealed there will be a "Windows 10 launch at the end of July" during an investor call.

July is an unusual time for Microsoft to launch an operating system - in fact it's only happened twice before, with the release of Windows NT 3.1 on 27 July 1993 and the release of Windows 7 on 22 July 2009.
We're counting on it being the third week of the month as the back to school season begins that week or the week before, depending on the store. This is bolstered by rumours OEMs will have a finished version of Windows 10 by June, with devices available for this important shopping season.

Narrowing it down to a day, Microsoft has traditionally launched its new desktop operating systems between Tuesday and Thursday, no matter the year or month (Windows 8 and 8.1 are the only ones to launch on a Friday), with Thursday being the most regular candidate.

This does raise questions as to whether the anticipated Windows 10 Consumer Preview build, which was expected to arrive as some point ahead of the official launch, will ever make an appearance, as time is running out for any meaningful testing to be done or feedback to be received.

If rumours are to be believed, however, 23 July might not be the end of Windows 10 releases this year.


Mary J Foley at ZDNet has claimed Windows 10 will be released in two waves, the first of which will arrive in summer with the second coming in the autumn.

The second release, which could come in October - the month Microsoft has traditionally favoured for Windows launches - will be significant, but not groundbreaking, she said, and will be preceded by several smaller updates in the interim.

This would fit with Microsoft's stated plan to speed up its update timetable and break with its history of releasing totally new versions of the Windows OS every few years.

Oculus Rift release date revealed


Oculus VR announces its first virtual reality headset is ready to hit the market.
Virtual reality fans will be pleased to know that Oculus VR has finally revealed it will launch the long-awaited Rift headset in early 2016.

The former Kickstarter project announced in its blog that pre-orders will begin later this year for the Rift, which will be based on an updeated version of its Crescent Bay prototype. The unveiling of the immersive piece of kit was also accompanied by few teaser images to help us get the general idea. 



Oculus Rift allows users to step into a virtual world by projecting 3D images through lenses in the headset and using a head-tracking system they can look around environments. The end goal is for gaming and entertainment to become totally immersive; letting the wearer feel part of gaming worlds or even movie scenes.

Price for Oculus Rift was not revealed (we’ll most likely find out weeks before pre-orders begin) but the post did reveal it will come with an improved tracking system, meaning a greater experience when seated or standing.

Despite going through several re-designs and prototypes since it dominated crowd-funding website Kickstarter, the images still show a chunky piece of hardware. However, potential owners worried about comfort will be pleased to hear Rift will ship with “updated ergonomics for a more natural fit”, which is handy considering the gaming hours we could clock using it.



Oculus will unveil further details in the upcoming weeks including specs, software and what games and experiences consumers can expect from the headset. The company claims Ocuclus Rift will revolutionise anything from entertainment to communication and we're sure to find out about more applications when gaming mecca E3 kicks off in June.

Microsoft Security Essentials / Windows Defender (2015) review


Simple, quiet and unobtrusive, how does Windows 8.1's latest built in security system stack up against the competition?



Despite the name change to Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials is designed to work with the other security features baked into Windows. This includes the Windows Firewall and the SmartScreen website and download filter, and its biggest selling point is that you normally wouldn’t know it’s there. It updates automatically through Windows Update, and sends the few notifications you might see through the standard Action Center in the Windows system tray. It protects in real-time but also allows scheduled and manual scans, and there’s little reason to even open its control panel.

If you do, you’ll find a simple UI with the focus on performing quick, full and custom scans, and on telling you whether the signatures are up to date. You can look through the history and see if any quarantined items deserve to be restored into the wild, while the settings allow you to exclude certain files, locations, file types or processes, and whether or not to scan removable drives.



That’s it. It’s a deliberately simple anti-malware tool, and speedy too, taking around 1min 33secs to complete a scan on our ageing dual-core PC. We also found it light on system resources, not noticeably affecting usability.

The problem is that Security Essentials can’t offer real peace of mind. While the latest update has managed to improve threat detection, in our tests Mirosoft Security Essentials was still compromised by 32% of threats. Its ability to allow legitimate software to work uninhibited did boost its overall accuracy score, but this is still a worrying result for Microsoft's built-in security tool. Honestly, we wouldn't trust our PCs and our data to Security Essentialls. Frankly, neither should you.

Microsoft Surface 3 review

Microsoft shrinks the Surface Pro 3 and cuts the price, delivering a capable, high-quality hybrid


Microsoft Surface 3 review: Building a new Surface

The Surface 3 impresses from the off: it’s just as classy and lovingly crafted as we’ve come to expect from Microsoft’s Surface brand. There’s the same VaporMG metal construction – all bevelled edges, elegant straight lines and brisk curves – and it feels solid and tautly constructed. It turns out that a miniaturised Surface Pro 3 is a very lovely thing indeed.

The Surface 3 is just as attractive as its big brother, then, but it has other talents. Far easier to grab and carry around in one hand than the Pro, the Surface 3 is a device that demands to be taken everywhere. Sure, it isn’t as portable as an iPad Air 2, but at 9.3mm thick and weighing 622g, it’s still light compared to many full-sized Windows tablets.

Clasp on the optional Type Cover, meanwhile, and the pair weigh in at a creditable 884g – a combination that’s a touch lighter even than the feathery 923g Apple MacBook.
Microsoft Surface 3 review: All the features in a smaller case

Microsoft has done a cracking job of shrinking the Surface 3 without diluting the qualities that made the Pro so special. Retaining the 3:2 display ratio employed on the Surface Pro 3 is a masterstroke: there’s no doubt a taller, squarer-shaped screen makes for a more spacious, usable display in both portrait and landscape orientations. It’s a canny choice for a hybrid device designed to flit seamlessly between tablet and laptop roles.



The kickstand hinge is not infinitely adjustable as it is on the Surface Pro 3, instead offering three positions to choose from. This is no great loss, however, with two of the positions suitable for working at a desk, and the third ideal for use on your lap. In the crush of a commuter train or economy aeroplane seat, the Surface 3 remains an accommodating travel buddy.

Likewise, the slightly smaller Type Cover is superb, with keys that are exactly the same size as that of the Surface Pro 3’s version. Microsoft hasn’t worked some TARDIS-like magic here; there’s simply a smaller border around the cover’s edges.

Just like its big brother, the smaller Type Cover uses magnets to snap into place along the Surface 3’s lower bezel, a feature that tilts the keyboard forward a touch, making it more comfortable to type both on a desk or your lap.

Even the slightly shorter touchpad works well, something you can’t always take for granted on smaller Windows devices. It’s a shame you still have to pay £110 extra for the privilege of owning the Type Cover, though.

Thankfully, Microsoft hasn’t been tempted to adopt Apple’s less-is-more approach to connectivity. There’s still 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, a full-sized USB 3 port, mini-DisplayPort, a 3.5mm headphone jack and, hidden away beneath the kickstand, a microSD slot. One major change is that the Surface Pro 3’s magnetic charging socket has made way for a micro-USB port – there’s a charger bundled in the box, but the big news is that the Surface 3 can now be charged from any USB source.


Microsoft Surface 3 review: Display quality

It’s the display that clinches the deal. Although it’s smaller than the Surface Pro 3’s display, the Surface 3’s 10.8in, 1,920 x 1,280 display is every bit as crisp. That’s because the pixel density of 216ppi is identical.

Quality is stupendous, with colours that pop off the screen without ever veering off into oversaturation. There’s no need to reach for measurement hardware to see that the Surface 3’s display is very good indeed.

In fact, testing reveals the Surface 3’s display is superior to the Surface Pro 3’s. It’s brighter, for one, reaching a maximum of 403cd/m2, and the contrast ratio of 833:1 is a touch better, too. Colour accuracy is superb, the IPS display dredging up an impressive 97% of the sRGB colour gamut – again, a better result than the Surface Pro 3 – while colour accuracy was near perfect, the Surface 3 delivering an average Delta E of 1.81 and a maximum deviation of 3.38.

The only weakness is the Surface 3’s backlighting. Just as with previous models, there’s a telltale glow of backlight leakage around the panel’s edges, and the backlighting is by no means perfectly even.
Microsoft Surface 3 review: Touchscreen and the Surface Pen

It might seem like heresy to cover such a beautiful display in smudges and fingerprints, but the Surface 3 urges you to do exactly that. The touchscreen supports ten-point multitouch, and provides a silky-smooth feel that allows fingers to glide across the display. It works superbly, as you’d expect.

The Surface Pen remains excellent. It’s exactly the same as that of the Surface Pro 3. The pressure sensitivity works wonderfully in sketching and painting apps such as Fresh Paint, and functions just as effectively for handwriting and inking applications. It’s comfy to hold, with the matte finish providing the right amount of grip.

There are some annoyances: with the Surface 3, the Pen is a £45 optional extra, and there’s still nowhere on the tablet itself to dock it. One option is to use a stick-on loop of fabric that attaches it to the Type Cover, as with the Surface Pro 3, but Microsoft now has the cheek to charge £4.50 for the privilege. Happily, it’s just as effective to simply clip the Pen to the top edge of Type Cover.


Microsoft Surface 3 review: Prices, specifications and performance

The Surface 3 comes in two flavours. For £419, the base model provides 64GB of eMMC storage and 2GB of RAM. Spend an extra £80 and the £499 model boosts up to 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. Models with integrated 4G are on the way, too, but pricing and dates haven’t yet been confirmed.

Whichever model you choose, though, the Surface 3 is powered by Intel’s latest generation of Atom processor: the quad-core 1.6GHz Atom x7-Z8700. This marks the debut of Intel’s Cherry Trail platform, which takes the existing 22nm Bay Trail architecture, shrinks it down to a 14nm process, and tacks on an upgraded GPU based on Intel’s Broadwell-class HD Graphics cores.

Performance is the Surface 3’s biggest compromise. To be fair, this isn’t entirely due to the limitations of the fanless Atom processor. The slow eMMC storage plays a part, too, forcing the Surface 3 to a crawl once you start pushing it harder. The occasional slowdown isn’t a killer blow, but there’s no getting away from the fact that this is a low-powered device best suited to modest workloads and light multitasking.

Needless to say, the Surface 3 struggled with the more intensive parts of our tough new benchmark suite, but the results clearly outline where its weaknesses and strengths lie. A score of 28 in the image-encoding portion of tests puts the Surface 3 a long way behind the 1.1GHz Core M-equipped Apple MacBook, which scored 60.



However, the Surface 3’s quad-core Atom evens the score in the video-encoding benchmark, its four cores nudging past the Core M’s dual-core, Hyper-Threaded CPU with a result of 26 to the MacBook’s 24. Multitasking was a wash: both the MacBook and Surface 3 scored 3.

The Surface 3’s Top Trump is battery life. Its Atom x7 sips a mere 2W of power, and despite the bright, potent IPS screen, we found it easily capable of lasting the whole day. In our 720p video-rundown test, with screen brightness calibrated to 120cd/m2 and Wi-Fi turned off, the Surface 3 lasted 11hrs 36mins. That’s very good for a Windows tablet, and not too far behind the Apple iPad Air 2, which lasted 12hrs 46mins in the same test.
Microsoft Surface 3 review: Everything else

Microsoft hasn’t skimped on any of the more minor elements. The cameras are excellent. By tablet standards, the front-facing snapper has an unusually high resolution of 3.5 megapixels, and while pixel count is no mark of quality, it serves up crisp, lifelike selfies and video chats. The rear-facing 8-megapixel camera is surprisingly capable, too, dredging up a decent amount of detail with a pleasingly natural colour balance.

Both are helped by the Camera app’s new burst mode, which lets you choose the best out of ten photographs, shot in rapid succession. When it comes to quickly grabbing an image and sharing it with others, the Surface 3 is in its element.

The pair of speakers – one mounted either side of the display – are pretty good too. Some distortion sets in at maximum volume, but there’s just enough mid-range presence to make both music and speech clear and pleasant to listen to. They’re better than the iPad Air 2’s speakers, delivering audio with far more presence and stereo separation, and the positioning means they’re less easy to muffle by accident.


Microsoft Surface 3 review: verdict

Compared to the slew of budget-priced Windows tablets on the market currently, the Microsoft Surface 3 looks expensive – stratospherically so considering it’s only powered by an Atom CPU.

However, this device is in a completely different class to your average budget Windows tablet. Everything – from the display to the cameras, the build to the battery life – is a cut above. No two ways about it, the Surface 3 stacks up against the best premium tablets from any manufacturer, Apple included.

The optional extras do see the prices rack up pretty quickly. The price of the base model rises from £419 to £574 once you factor in a Type Cover and Surface Pen, but in fairness that’s still cheaper than a similarly equipped iPad Air 2. And, don’t forget, the Surface 3 can run Windows applications, has a slightly superior display and does a better impression of a compact, lightweight laptop into the bargain. It even comes bundled with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal; another small but welcome bonus.

There are negatives to be found, not least the fact that, despite all the tweaks, Windows 8.1 remains a mediocre tablet OS: the app store is an embarrassment, and the interface can feel awkward on a small, high-DPI screen.

When the free upgrade to Windows 10 arrives, however, the Surface 3 promises to come into its own. The Surface 3 is the iPad rival Microsoft was trying to make all along, and finally it’s got it right. Now all we need is Windows 10.

Monday 4 May 2015

Palicomp Intel i5 Elite review

A surprisingly powerful desktop PC for sensible money – although the PSU may limit upgrade potential

With cutting-edge desktop PCs routinely costing thousands of pounds, it’s easy to forget just how capable more affordable models can be. Right on cue, the Palicomp Intel i5 Elite offers a perfect example of the sensibly priced desktop PC. Despite costing less than a top-end graphics card, the Intel i5 Elite packs in serious processing power and modest gaming performance for £600.



Palicomp Intel i5 Elite review: core hardware

What’s truly staggering, though, is just how much potential you can squeeze into a £600 PC with some judicious budget-juggling. In this instance, Palicomp has wisely dedicated a significant chunk of the money to the Intel i5 Elite’s CPU, an Intel Core i5-4690K. It's a processor that wouldn’t look out of place in a PC build costing well over £1,000, and Palicomp has given it a hefty boost by slotting it into an Asus Z97-P motherboard and overclocking it from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz.

This doesn’t leave a huge amount in the budget for a graphics card, but the Intel i5 Elite wisely reaches for Nvidia’s capable sub-£100 contender, the GeForce GTX 750. As the GPU that first introduced Nvidia’s power-efficient Maxwell architecture, this isn’t a card that should be judged on its size. This tiny, half-height card punches well above its weight, and not least because Palicomp has squeezed every last drop ofperformance out of it: the Gigabyte-branded GTX 750 has had its core and boost clocks pushed from 1,059MHz and 1,137MHz up to 1,208MHz and 1,202MHz respectively.
Palicomp Intel i5 Elite review: performance

The result of Palicomp’s efforts is a PC that absolutely flies along in everyday use. Despite the lack of an SSD – the Intel i5 Elite employs a 1TB Seagate hybrid HDD – performance is very respectable indeed. In our new benchmarks, the Palicomp proved 29% faster than our reference system – which is based around a stock 3.4GHz Core i5-4670K, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD – easing to an overall result of 129.


That’s impressive in itself, but we also ran our old benchmarks to see how the Palicomp stacked up against our current A-List entry, the Chillblast Fusion Quasar. Needless to say, the Intel i5 Elite’s faster CPU gave it the edge, with an Overall result of 1.23 pulling ahead of the Chillblast’s 1.14.

Gaming performance is also pretty good. The tiny GTX 750 scythed through our Crysis benchmark at 1080p resolution and High detail, racking up an average frame rate of 73fps, which is 2fps faster than the Chillblast. To its credit, the Palicomp served up a playable 46fps even once we pushed the benchmark settings up to Very High detail. As long as you stick to gaming at Full HD resolution and don’t go too crazy with the detail settings, the Palicomp will be more than capable of playing the latest games.
Palicomp Intel i5 Elite review: expansion and build

There’s nothing fancy or attention-grabbing about the Palicomp’s exterior: the Intel i5 Elite is housed in an unassuming Cooler Master Elite 430 case. This isn’t a high-end case by any means – a fact that’s instantly given away with the thin metal panels and basic styling, but it ticks most of the right boxes for a budget build.



Indeed, there are no issues with the case’s cooling potential. The slow-spinning 120mm fan at the front of the case and Thermalright True Spirit 120M CPU cooler keep noise to a gentle hum, but still work well. With Prime95 and FurMark pushing the system to its limits, we measured a maximum temperature of 76°C on the CPU and 80°C on the GPU. And since there’s room for a further four 120mm fans on the base, rear and roof of the case, there’s plenty of scope for adding faster components in the future. Our only gripe is the lack of dust filters; this is something the Chillblast’s Zalman case made good use of.

The Asus motherboard doesn’t deliver a huge amount of expansion potential. There are two PCI slots, two PCI Express x1 slots, and one PCI Express 2 x16 slot (limited to x2 speeds here), but there are only two SATA 600 ports free; it isn't possible to take full advantage of the case’s four 3.5in and two 2.5in tool-free drive bays. The 10GB/sec M.2 slot comes as some consolation, though, making it possible to upgrade the build with a tiny, superfast SSD further down the line.

Another area where the Cooler Master case is found wanting is cable management. Where the Chillblast’s Zalman Z3 Plus case made it possible to stow cables behind the motherboard tray, the Cooler Master Elite 430 leaves all the cables out in the open. As a result, Palicomp has been forced to resort to bunching cables together with cable ties – despite its best efforts, it doesn’t make for the most elegant interior.



The presence of a Corsair 450W PSU is a touch limiting, too. This is ample for the Intel i5 Elite’s components, and particularly so due to the extremely power-efficient graphics card, but those looking to upgrade to a faster GPU in the future may find it doesn't provide enough juice. By comparison, Chillblast specified a 600W FSP PSU for its Fusion Quasar.