Palicomp AMD Abysm gaming PC review

At the added account end of the calibration of best gaming PCs, the AMD Abysm from UK PC architect Palicomp has a simple and glassy architecture with an adorable agreement and pricing. While those at the college end of the prebuilt spectrum get added attention, the entry-level amplitude has some aberrant amount and advised builds that can be begin from reliable builders. But is Palicomp’s AMD Abysm one of those?

Straight out of the box, its KOLINK Bastion case stands out. A glossy atramentous box with a bottle ancillary console acceptance bright sight—and admission via four deride screws—into the audacity of the machine. These are all accurate and tidy, with a pleasant, attenuate afterglow from the Asus TUF motherboard inside. The advanced has a brushed-metal-esque accomplishment to it so it looks nice on its own but additionally simple abundant to be captivated into any appointment or gaming allowance setup. 

Front-facing ports can be begin on the top of the case, with the accepted suspects on show: two USB 2.0s, a mic and a headphone jack, and one USB 3.0. Forth with the abundantly satisfying-to-push ability button and displace buttons, there’s additionally a appointed RGB button, admitting the case lacks lights from the start. To complete the rounds, on the aback you’ll accept affluence to comedy with, as the GPU offers a DVI, one HDMI and three DisplayPorts for your accessibility and the motherboard furthers the calculation by accouterment six USBs, and an HDMI and DVI of its own.

As is accepted with prebuilts, we aboriginal analysis the apparatus and analyze to the amount of architecture a similarly-specced PC yourself. Afterwards chalking up the arcade account that the Abyss’s body would demand, on accepted prices with a few discounts included, the after-effects were promising. Including a archetype of Windows 10, the accomplished body from case to cards came in about the £770 mark. Thus, the Abyss—given it’ll accommodate construction, commitment to acreage UK and a three-year, return-to-base warranty—offers abundant value. 

The banderole acts are able-bodied considered, overall: an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU; an 8GB AMD RX 570 GPU; 8GB of Acute Ballistix RAM; an ASUS TUF B450-plus motherboard; and a 512GB Intel 660p M.2 SSD teamed with a 1TB Seagate HDD. A appealing wholesome collection, decidedly as this is the Abyss’s accepted build. As with best configurations, you can add to or augment the Abyss, such as allurement for the CPU to be overclocked for an added 25 quid to clasp some added abstract out of it, to swapping out genitalia broad to added brands’ items.

Putting it through our accepted apartment of tests, I absolutely started to get a handle on the Abyss’s akin and ability as a gaming PC. I started with 3DMark Firestrike’s accustomed 1080p test. It punched out a actual aboveboard account of 10902, which, while not stratospheric, put it about the akin I was expecting, and accouterment a aboriginal adumbration of the 1080p-ness of the Abyss. For reference, Firestrike Extreme—the 1440p test—gave out a account of 5336 advertence a, well, less-good result, and addition indicator to its position as a 1080p machine.

The gaming tests helped to accompanying beef these numbers out a bit and affirm their antecedent findings. Aloof for reference, I activated the Abysm on a BenQ 4K adviser but, naturally, after-effects for tests and amateur at a brace of resolutions occurred and are authentic below. Apparition Recon Wildlands provided a solid analysis and anon accepted this as a not-4K machine. At these college echelons, the arrangement absolutely struggled and it seemed abundant added at home already the resolution, mainly, was brought down. The Abysm could ‘manage’ 1440p and at Actual Aerial affection cartoon settings, it maintained a 38 fps amount that was bigger to 43 (ish) fps back brought bottomward to High. So, about there for 1440p, and conceivably aloof about tolerable if you absolutely amount the added $.25 of detail, but not ideal by any means. 

I could about feel it accepting afterpiece to abundance as the resolution and cartoon settings were bass bottomward and it performed consistently at its best in Wildlands back on a 1080p resolution and at Meidum to Aerial settings’; Added than 60 fps at Medium; basically blast on 60 fps on High; while Actual Aerial came out at 53 fps. Agnate were the allegation in Absolute War: Warhammer II with it disturbing with the active battles at aerial cartoon settings and resolutions—hovering about 30 fps back pushed to Ultra and at 1080p or 1440p—but actuality a abundant added competent and bland abettor at 1080p on Aerial (50 fps) or Average (64 fps).

While it may assume a little underwhelming to not be able to set aggregate to mega-high settings and absolutely go for it in games, it's account canonizing that the Abysm aloof isn’t that apparatus and you can’t apprehend that for its price. It’s a constant aerialist at 1080p on medium-to-high settings, and almost—almost—capable at 1440p too. It’s about a little arresting that it hovers in amid 1080p and 1440p; aloof a bit added action and it’d be a abundant 1440p apparatus too, admitting that could be accomplished with a bit of tinkering in the configurator at purchase. 

Sidestepping gaming-centric tests for a moment, and to accede the Abyss’s added accustomed capabilities, PCMark 10 gave out a account of 5549 putting it in the top brackets, concreting the abstraction that this is a able gaming PC that can excel in home and able use too. This was backed up back active the CPU and accumulator anamnesis tests: CrystalDisk showed the HDD had a 219 MB/s apprehend acceleration and a 207 MB/s address speed, and the SSD banked numbers of 1837 MB/s apprehend and 987 MB/s address speeds. Cinebench averaged out a reasonable 3041cb.

Overall, the Abysm absolutely offers an adorable antithesis of build, quality, components, performance, and value. It runs quiet, performs alluringly at 1080p, has ablaze storage, and does able-bodied about for a 'budget' build. Calling it account makes it feel like a body that’s befuddled calm out of bargain gear, and that would be accomplishing it a disservice. A 'considered entry-level AMD build' is abundant added of an adapted label, if you will. Accustomed the calibration of prebuilts and their accepted prices, at 700 quid, the Abysm is an entry-level archetypal alms abundant value. It’s not blithely future-proof, but it does a lot of things able-bodied at a amount that won’t breach the bank.