Palicomp Phoenix i5 Laser review

Palicomp's Phoenix i5 Laser has a fairly boring Cooler Master Elite case that we've seen many times before. However, it's what's inside that counts. Fortunately, there's an Intel Core i5-2500K processor, overclocked to a blistering 4.6GHz. The overall score in our benchmarks of 132 makes this one of the fastest PCs we've seen - not bad going for a £550 PC. Along with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk, the Phoenix i5 Laser can able to handle any application you care to throw at it.

To keep things cool, Palicomp has fitted a massive CPU heatsink and fan, along with a case fan at the rear and one behind the front panel to keep air flowing through the case. As a result, the Laser makes a bit more noise than PCs with a standard Intel cooler and no other fans, but it's a low hum and not annoying.

While it's not designed to play games - the i5-2500K's integrated graphics chip barely managed to run our Dirt 3 test - the Laser has plenty of room inside the case for upgrades, with a multitude of drive bays and room for six expansion cards. If you move the hard disk to a different caddy, there's room for even the longest of today's graphics cards. The only issue is that the 450W power supply may not be able to handle the most power-hungry cards.