CyberPower Liquid Gamer Black Pearl review

CyberPower's Liquid Gamer certainly isn't a shrinking violet. The familiar Cooler Master Cosmos case is here a mere canvas upon which CyberPower has carved windows and daubed logos.

The gregarious visual design continues inside. The water in the extensive cooling setup is dyed green, and cables have been wrapped with fluorescent material. There are even coloured lights in the modular power supply, and a pair of neon blue strip-lights that lend the PC an ethereal air.

Thankfully, there are also practical benefits. The three GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards have huge copper waterblocks to keep the cards chilled, and the processor is just as grateful for refrigeration. The powerful 3GHz Core 2 Quad Q9650 has been overclocked to a monstrous 4.1GHz and, as such, provides blistering performance. In our benchmarks, it scored the second-highest result this month - 2.36 - which was beaten only by Scan's Core i7 PC.

Gaming performance was equally impressive. In Crysis, the CyberPower was ahead of the Mesh in our 1,920 x 1,200 benchmark with very high settings, and not far behind the Labs-winning Scan. Call of Duty 4 and Call of Juarez also saw decent figures, with the CyberPower only beaten, again, by Chillblast and Scan.

The huge chassis - and some fearsome hardware inside - does come with caveats. The CyberPower is both noisy and expensive, with its price of £3,403 exc VAT beaten only by the Scan, which costs a mere £46 more. The inclusion of three huge fans to keep things cool also means that the CyberPower is the loudest machine this month - the Liquid Gamer ran at 48dBA during idle periods, and a ferocious 50dBA when attacking our benchmarks.

There may be plenty of power available, but we're unable to call the CyberPower our ultimate PC: it's just too expensive, too garish and too loud.

Author: Mike Jennings