Palicomp Core i3 Blast 530OC44 review

Intel’s Core i3 processor has single-handedly raised expectations for budget PC performance to a level unrecognisable just a year ago. Having become the go-to chip for manufacturers, we’re seeing more and more effort being put into overclocking as a way of adding value, culminating in this: the £425 exc VAT Palicomp’s Core i3 Blast 530OC44, a PC that grabs that level, straps a rocket to it and fires it into the stratosphere.

Out of the box the Core i3-530 runs at a respectable 2.93GHz, but Palicomp has overclocked it to a mighty 4.4GHz. To do so, the stock Intel cooler just wouldn’t do; instead Palicomp has used a Thermaltake ISGC-400 cooler and replaced the fan with a PWM-equipped model. This change helps keeps the CPU cool – it peaked at a safe 79 degrees C – and also helps keep the system down to a quiet hum.

But most importantly, it makes the Palicomp insanely fast. It effortlessly outclassed the A-Listed PC Specialist Aurea i3-530 Pro, which scored 1.66 with the same CPU at standard clock speeds, and went far enough to threaten far dearer PCs. An overall benchmark score of 2.56 isn’t quite the fastest we’ve seen, but it’s higher than anything else currently on the A List – even narrowly beating the £1,260 Chillblast Fusion Photo OC III, the fastest PC currently in the Enthusiast PC category.

That score on a £425 PC is almost enough to open wallets on its own, but with a fair chunk of that budget swallowed up by the processor, cutbacks elsewhere are understandable. The Radeon HD 5450, for instance, is the weakest card in ATI’s current range, and not really intended for gaming at all. It managed only 27fps in our Low-quality, 1,366 x 768 Crysis benchmark, but throw a 1080p video at it and it will cope just fine. It’s also passively cooled which, when added to the custom CPU cooler, makes the Palicomp nice and quiet, particularly when compared to most high-powered PCs.

It all sits inside a Cooler Master Elite 330 chassis, which isn’t particularly exciting or complex, but Palicomp has made the best of it. For starters, it’s tidy: the PSU isn’t modular and there’s no separate motherboard tray, but cables are tucked neatly away behind the optical drive cages and only emerge when they’re needed. Palicomp has taken care to tie various wires down, with SATA cables lashed to the side of the unpainted interior and the front panel connectors secured to the bottom.

There’s plenty of room to grow, too. The ASRock P55 Pro/USB 3 motherboard provides a second PCI-Express x16 slot running at x4 speed alongside pairs of PCI Express x1 and PCI slots, and both spare DIMM sockets are easily accessible despite the large Thermaltake CPU cooler. Five SATA/300 sockets lie free, with one perpendicular to the board, and the handful of empty hard disk and optical drive bays offer tool-less entry. The backplate is good, too, with a single USB 3 port, seven more USB 2 ports, eSATA and a pair of PS/2 sockets.

Elsewhere, the specification is decent enough: 4GB of DDR3 RAM is more than enough to keep Windows 7 Home Premium ticking over, and the 1TB hard disk is large enough to cope with sizeable media collections. A DVD writer is included, too.

It’s quiet, tidy and versatile, then, but the real feather in the Palicomp’s cap is its combination of price and performance. Although it won’t have you gaming, the Core i3 Blast 530OC44 delivers the kind of raw application power that can’t be matched by systems costing three times as much. It goes straight onto the A List, and it will be hard to topple.