CyberPower Gamer Infinity i7 Andromeda review

CyberPower's new Gamer Infinity system certainly stands out. With its blue lights, fan controls and LCD temperature display, the Apevia X-Sniper case makes quite a statement. It's an enthusiast PC, built for gaming, and it's equipped with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 that motors through modern games.

No surprise then that - although its CPU isn't overclocked - the CyberPower dispatched our gaming tests as handily as the Chillblast, averaging 52fps in Call of Juarez with high detail at 1,280 x 1,024 and 27fps in Crysis with very high detail at 1,600 x 1,200.

Of course, a satisfactory gaming experience demands a decent monitor as well as a good graphics card, and CyberPower, like Eclipse and Scan, provides a 22in BlueH H224W widescreen display. It's not an award-winning monitor, but it's bright and clear enough for everyday use.

The Andromeda's MSI X58 Platinum motherboard is similar to this month's other boards, but it has only two PCI Express 16x slots where the Asus and Gigabyte boards offer three. Still, this isn't crucial, and you do get two additional SATA ports and a button to clear the CMOS - ideal for those who like to tinker.

Surprisingly, CyberPower equips the Andromeda with a whopping 6GB of RAM, but only a 500GB hard disk. We're not convinced that having so much memory is useful; we think 3GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk, as chosen by some other suppliers, would make for a more versatile system.

With its HD 4870 graphics, the CyberPower is a credible gaming rig, and it boasts one of this month's longest warranties. But it's not quiet, peaking at 42dBA, and unless you really need all that RAM there are better-balanced systems out there.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith