Palicomp i5 Tremor
An overclocked CPU and a super-fast SSD make this a tempting proposition – if you can live with the noise
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PRICE from palicomp.co.uk
T£583 (£700 inc VAT) he Palicomp i5 Tremor looks unassuming, but inside it ticks a Core i5-6600K that’s been aggressively overclocked to 4.6GHz. That’s a big boost compared to the standard i5-6600, which tops out at 3.9GHz; the i5 Tremor’s overall benchmark scores matched those of this month’s Core i7-6700 systems. If you want to be technically precise, the Tremor’s single-threaded score was a few per cent higher, owing to the Core i5’s higher clock speed, while its multitasking score was a few per cent lower, owing to its lack of Hyper-Threading. Overall, however, it’s fair to say that Palicomp has achieved Core i7 performance for the price of a Core i5.
With the money saved, the system builder has chosen to invest in a Samsung SM951 SSD, which fits into the motherboard’s M.2 slot rather than a traditional bay. The beauty of M.2 is that it connects directly to the PCI Express bus, bypassing the SATA controller to open up the drive’s full performance potential. In our tests, the SM951 achieved sequential read rates of nearly 2GB/sec, and write rates of 1.2GB/sec, blowing its SATA-based rivals out of the water. It’s a shame that the drive’s 256GB capacity probably won’t be enough to hold all your personal data files; it’s backed up by a 2TB Seagate hard disk that should do the job, albeit at a slower pace.
When it comes to gaming, Palicomp has – like Overclockers – taken the AMD route. Rather than matching the Kinetic H1’s Radeon R9 380X, however, Palicomp has opted for the more modest R7 370. This is still a great choice for 1080p gaming: at maximum detail in Dirt Showdown it averaged 65 frames per second, and never dipped below 50fps. Not surprisingly, though, it won’t run smoothly at 4K – at this resolution it averaged an uneven 25fps.
The i5 Tremor uses the same Asus Z170-P motherboard as the Mesh Elite 6700 PC Pro, and therefore shares that system’s good range of internal expansion options. Two PCI Express x1 slots and a full-width PCI Express x4 slot sit alongside two conventional PCI slots, while two spare DIMM slots allow you to expand the supplied 16GB of DDR4 memory, should you wish to. There are also two free SATA ports, offering scope to add extra drives, alongside the pre-installed hard disk and DVD writer.
The rear panel exposes two USB 2 and two USB 3 ports, plus USB Type-C. At the front, however, the Palicomp’s case offers only a single USB 2 socket and one additional USB 3 port. This is a little disappointing: for all its faults, the Mesh’s case offers two of each.
But the i5 Tremor’s real foible is noise. Presumably as a consequence of Palicomp’s extreme overclocking, the processor fan revs up to maximum speed almost as soon as the CPU is taxed with any sort of load. The graphics card is noisy too: its fans were running loudly for the entire duration of our Dirt Showdown tests. The sound isn’t too grating – to some, we’re sure, it won’t be an issue at all. But if peace and quiet are valuable to you then you’ll be better off with the Mesh, which achieved similar performance in both desktop tasks and games while running near-silent.
It’s also worth noting that while the Palicomp supplies its system with a decent three-year warranty, it’s strictly return-to-base, so if something goes wrong you’ll be off to the Post Office with a rather large and heavy box.
All the same, Palicomp deserves praise for having managed to bring together superb desktop performance, strong gaming power and a nextgeneration SSD, all within our strict £700 price limit. If you can live with the noise, the i5 Tremor is a very impressive package indeed.