A thin but powerful PC
Why are desktop PCs so big? One reason is that the smaller the case, the harder it is to keep the parts within it cool. So it always seems like a lot of space is wasted, but room for air means the built-in fans don’t have to work so noisily to keep the temperature down.
When you find a machine like this one, slotted into a slim ‘media PC’ case that can be stood up or laid flat in small spaces, you would expect compromises. Yet somehow, despite being thin enough to hold between your thumb and finger, the Palicomp Intel i5 Raven manages to stay quieter than comparable PCs while providing enough processing power for most purposes.
The Raven case resembles its avian namesake, but not in a good way. The matt-black plastic front and sides have a strange pinched, ribbed design – reminiscent of overlapping feathers – that might be more at home in one of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tales, perhaps The Fall of the Mouse of Usher.
Anyway, try to ignore its appearance and you’ll find that the Raven is really rather practical. Two open pages of Computeractive side by side is roughly the same area size as the Raven, which is just a bit more square. Within this area they’ve fitted a decent motherboard bearing an Intel Core i5-6400 processor. It’s not as powerful as the 6600 found in other systems at this price, and the 8GB of memory isn’t the quickest that this motherboard can accommodate. Adding more memory later, up to 16GB, is a straightforward task.
Even so, the Palicomp Intel i5 Raven was pretty nifty in our tests, although it was better at multitasking and complex jobs such as video editing (when it can use all of its four processor cores) than ploughing through individual tasks such as applying filters to photos.
Also shoehorned in is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card, which helps out with things like video effects in programs and runs any 3D game at Full HD resolution with high-quality settings. Unusually, Palicomp includes a wireless Xbox 360 controller, complete with a USB dongle to connect it to the PC. Windows 10 is designed to work with this, and many games come set up for it. If games aren’t your thing, you’re bound to find someone among your friends or family who’ll gladly take it off your hands.
The Raven’s 1TB hard drive provides plenty of storage. It’s a hybrid drive, with a bit of flash memory bolted on, for faster operation. You could install two more laptop-style 2.5in drives inside the case if you needed to, along with the slot-loading DVD drive that’s already included.
Outside, there’s a good array of sockets for accessories, including fast USB 3.0 ports front and back. One omission is an optical audio jack for top-of-the-range amplifiers. A more vexing omission is Wi-Fi, which is an optional extra that you’ll need if your router, or perhaps a Powerline Ethernet adapter, isn’t nearby. There are two DVI sockets and one for monitors.
You could buy a slightly more powerful PC for this money, but it wouldn’t be this small. For general use, the graphics card may be overkill, but the Raven is a capable all-round system that can be tucked out of the way.
VERDICT
It’s meant to be a bad omen when a raven leaves the tower, but a solid mid-range PC has never been more compact than this.
SPECIFICATIONS
2.7GHz Intel Core i5-6400 quad-core processor • 8GB memory • 1TB hybrid drive • 4GB Nvidia GTX 960 graphics card • 4x USB 3 ports • 4x USB 2 ports • Gigabit Ethernet port • HDMI port • 2x DVI ports • DisplayPort • Windows 10 Home • 382x350x105mm (HxWxD) • Three-year warranty