Palicomp Alpha Phase Pro Reviews

While the PC isn't an eyesore, it's not much of a looker, either. The compact tower case doesn't weigh much, although its perforated rear and sides do little to block out sound. There's only one case fan - a surprisingly noisy 80mm outflow at the back. The system is well supplied with USB ports, even though there are only two at the front. The Gigabyte GA-Z777-D3H motherboard has four USB3 and four standard USB ports at the back, alongside the usual Gigabit Ethernet port, a PS/2 port, optical S/PDIF output and analogue 7.1 audio outputs. There are also headphone and mic ports at the front of the case. The backplate is also home to the HDMI, DVI and VGA ports for the processor's integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset. You can connect up to two displays for multi-screen desktop use. The latest generation of Intel's on-processor graphics is a huge improvement on Sandy Bridge, and can finally play modern games. It's not powerful enough for our usual desktop PC Dirt 3 test, which we run at 1,920x1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra detail, but when we dropped the settings to 1,280x720 with High detail and no anti-aliasing we saw a smooth 37fps. The integrated graphics processor can of course cope with HD video from the PC's Blu-ray reader. You can upgrade the graphics with the free PCI Express x16 slot, but you'll need a better power supply for all but the least power-hungry cards.