Palicomp Intel i7 Supernova review: The full package – if you can afford it
An extremely capable gaming system with great storage and a stable CPU overclock
Pros
- Masses of internal storage
- Brand-new Z390 motherboard chipset
- Brilliant performance, even in VR
Cons
- Not exactly cheap
- Very, very little else...
It’s been a while since we’ve had a full-on, high-spec gaming desktop come into the Expert Reviews office, and Palicomp’s Intel i7 Supernova is suitably up to date: it’s got a 9th-gen Intel CPU on computing duties, the octa-core Intel Core i7-9700K, with plenty of graphical muscle from an EVGA-made GeForce RTX 2070.
Palicomp Intel i7 Supernova review: Pricing and competition
At £1,600, it’s quite the investment but given the two key components, and that it comes pre-built, this is pretty standard pricing. There’s a Scan 3XS Gamer RTX model that costs the same and Overclockers has its £1,700 Gaming Kalash system, both of which are equipped with the same processor and 8GB GPU.
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Palicomp Intel i7 Supernova review: Performance and specifications
You should still expect sky-high performance for this much cash, though, and the Intel i7 Supernova is happy to oblige. The Core i7-9700K might not have Hyper-Threading, essentially allowing it to double its core count in the eyes of Windows applications, but with Palicomp’s own overclock from 3.6GHz to 5.1GHz, it tore up or 4K benchmarks. An image test score of 193 points shows immense single-core potential, something that’s very helpful for games, while its video test score of 307 and multitasking score of 331 demonstrate its readiness for heavy multithreading. The 16GB of DDR4 RAM probably doesn’t hurt, either.
Overall, the Intel i7 Supernova scored an excellent 300 and there wasn’t a whiff of instability from the overclock. The AIO watercooler, a Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L, is clearly pulling its weight here – and it also supplies the system with some eye-catching lighting from its RGB fans. Due to the InWin 101C chassis’ distinctive layout, these fans face outward towards the glass side window, sucking in air from the opposite side instead of through the front.
Having such a speedy CPU has also ensured that the RTX 2070 graphics card is completely unshackled. This was most evident in Dirt: Showdown, where the Intel i7 Supernova averaged 172fps at 1,920 x 1,080, one of the best results we’ve ever recorded for this game. 2,560 x 1,440 only saw this drop to 162fps, still high enough to max out a 144Hz monitor, and even 3,840 x 2,160 – 4K, in other words – ticked along nicely at 101fps.
Metro: Last Light Redux also ran very smoothly at 1,920 x 1,080, managing 94fps with Very High settings and SSAA enabled. At 2,560 x 1,440, it ran at 56fps, which isn’t quite as velvety smooth but still looks great. Only at 4K did it drop below 30fps, averaging 25fps – but at this resolution you can easily sacrifice SSAA as the picture is so sharp that you don’t really need much additional edge-smoothing. After disabling it, we got 50fps, which for a game as GPU-intensive as Metro is another fine result.
As is always the case with Nvidia’s RTX cards, VR is no problem either: the Intel i7 Supernova scored a perfect 11 in the SteamVR Performance Test, so you’ll be able to run any virtual reality game on maximum settings. There’s also a VirtualLink USB Type-C video output on the card, so supported headsets can plug in here instead of hogging one of the main display outputs (which are comprised of one HDMI port, two DisplayPorts and one DVI-D connector).
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Palicomp Intel i7 Supernova review: Storage and features
You get a better set of storage drives than most pre-built gaming PCs, too: 1TB NVMe SSD with a huge 2TB hard disk. The SSD isn’t the fastest of its kind – we recorded a sequential read speed of 1,741.4MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1,549.4MB/s – but it’s hardly slow and 1TB is a massive amount of solid-state space to have straight out of the box. By comparison, both the 3XS Gamer RTX and the Gaming Kalash come with 500GB SSDs.
Pull away the side window and there’s room to add another hard disk if desired, along with two spare 2.5in bays behind the motherboard tray. The motherboard itself has lots of room for customisations, offering multiple open RAM, PCI-E x16 and x1 slots and a spare M.2 slot. On its rear I/O port, there’s also a set of premium audio outputs, including optical S/PDIF, as well as a healthy supply of USB ports. Besides these connectors – which include two USB 2, USB 3 and USB 3.1 ports, plus a Type-C port – the case provides a handy two USB 3 ports on the front and even another Type-C port.
It’s also worth noting that the motherboard uses the most recent high-end Z390 chipset. This is partly self-evident, as the Core i7-9700K needs either Z370 or Z390 hardware for overclocking, but the 3XS Gamer RTX only has a B360 motherboard, meaning the Intel i7 Supernova has another advantage despite the matching price.
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Palicomp Intel i7 Supernova review: Verdict
In fact, it’s these little edges over the competition that make the Intel i7 Supernova Best Buy material. Even if these other systems can deliver comparable performance, you may as well get the one with more storage and a better motherboard. These aren’t exactly the most exciting parts of a PC, but they’ve definitely worked in this one’s favour.