Palicomp Kinetic Hydro-X review

We were impressed by AMD's Radeon HD 6870 last month, but until now, we've not seen it in a PC. The Palicomp Kinetic Hydro-X rectifies this by lining up two in a CrossFireX configuration.

The Palicomp roared through our gaming tests to deliver the best results we've seen: an average of 76fps in our 1,920 x 1,080 Very High quality Crysis test is a full 11fps faster than the Wired2Fire Hellspawn Xtreme - a system that had two HD 6850 cards. With 8x anti-aliasing it managed a stunning 64fps, and 49fps in our 2,560 x 1,600 benchmark is still 9fps faster than the Wired2Fire.

But it didn't stop at smashing our gaming records. While the Intel Core i7-950 normally runs at 3.07GHz, here it's overclocked to 4.2GHz. The score of 2.91 is the best we've recorded in a full PC - although with Sandy Bridge CPUs on their way don't be surprised if that's beaten again very soon.

Six gigabytes of RAM is becoming the standard in enthusiast machines, and the Blu-ray writer is a step forward from the BD-ROM drives we generally see. There's also a 64GB Kingston SSDNow V+ disk to house Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, alongside a 1.5TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 hard disk.

All these powerful components need suitable housing, and the Cooler Master HAF X chassis fits the bill. Remove the windowed side panel and you're greeted by an array of additional hardware: the power cables are hidden behind a shield, and the pair of graphics cards is held in place by an adjustable scaffold.

These extras make the matte-black interior look tidy, but upgrade room is limited. The third PCI Express x16 slot on the Asus Sabretooth X58 motherboard is blocked - although it only runs at 4x speed anyway - and there's a single PCI Express x1 slot free. The on-board connectors are difficult to access, and spare SATA ports are blocked by the graphics cage. At least the pipes from the Corsair watercooler don't impede the trio of empty DIMM sockets.

Palicomp has also foregone the HAF X's five tool-free hard disk bays, instead using the two 5.25in front bays with 3.5in converters. A small daughterboard connects the SSD and hard disk to the motherboard and power supply, and the bays can be removed via a couple of clamps - so you can change your disks without having to find your way to the SATA ports.

There are problems, the first of which is noise. While the Palicomp is quiet when idling, the graphics cards ramped up when stressed. Thermals weren't great, either: a peak CPU temperature of 86C shows the cooler at its limits with the overclock, and the peak of 89C across both graphics cards is High, too. then there's the peak power draw of 705W.

The peripherals are better. The 24in Full HD Samsung SyncMaster B2430L offers sharp detail, and colours that sit nicely between accurate and saturated. There's minor grain across light areas, a little backlight bleed around the edges and the stand isn't height adjustable, but it's perfectly acceptable. The Creative A500 5.1 speakers provide rumbling bass and rich sound throughout the range, and the Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse are acceptable.

So our big issue is that this PC's noise and heat are a touch high, but that's the price you pay for these benchmark results. The Chillblast Fusion Dimension is undoubtedly a slicker all-round system, but if you're willing to trade finesse for frame rates, and can't wait for Sandy Bridge, this monster of a PC is a blistering alternative.

Author: Mike Jennings