Palicomp Phoenix i5 Trooper desktop computer

Game players have long been the most demanding of home computer users. Modern games require the computer to perform enormous amounts of complex mathematics to recreate the realistic virtual worlds in which players find themselves.

For those people, a powerful computer is a must. The
Palicomp Phoenix i5 Trooper (product code PHOT9) is a ‘desktop tower' PC designed for just such users. The main innards are encased in a unit that stands about 17in (43cm) tall and about 19in (49cm) long, making it bigger than many desktop PCs we have seen recently.

The case includes a Samsung Blu-ray drive slotted into the front panel. This can read but not create Blu-ray discs and can read and create all CDs and DVDs. It also has spare drive bays, a memory card reader mounted further down and a 1.5TB (1,500GB) hard disk provides plenty of internal storage.

This itself houses three USB sockets and handy extra sockets for headphones and a microphone. On the back are eight more USB sockets that use the common USB 2 standard, and four that use the newer, faster USB 3, which is very useful if you have a USB 3 device to plug in. There are also two Firewire sockets, two eSata ports, surround-sound outputs, keyboard and mouse sockets and a network socket. Like most desktops it cannot connect to wireless networks but it can connect to Bluetooth wireless devices such as phones and keyboards.

The keyboard and mouse supplied are an average-quality wireless kit from Labtec. We found them a bit flimsy but they were comfortable enough. But the monitor, a 24in widescreen model from AOC (model 2436VWA), was better. Both VGA and DVI cables were supplied and the graphics card has connections for both, along with a HDMI socket for attaching a flat-panel TV. If you already have a monitor or want to connect this PC to your TV you can buy it without the monitor for £100 less.

The graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 5670 model with 1GB of its own memory. It's a reasonably powerful model that's complemented well by the main processor, an Intel ‘Sandy Bridge' Core i5-2300, and 4GB of memory.

With those specifications we'd have expected it to perform very well, and it didn't disappoint. It stormed through our DVD burning lab test (which simulates a real world task, copying a DVD to the computer) and producing excellent gaming results.

It includes Windows Home Premium 64-bit, Nero software for making discs and a good Logitech S220 stereo speaker set with a sub-woofer.

This isn't the fastest gaming ‘rig' around – it's possible to spend hundreds more to improve graphics performance – but it provides an excellent balance between cost and performance for gamers and people who just want to get more from their computers.