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CyberPower Liquid i7 Kraken review

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Verdict

A deceptive machine that matches reserved, sensible design with blistering speed and quality throughout

Review Date: 20 Jan 2011

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £1,475 (£1,770 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
5 stars out of 6

Performance
6 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

We've seen CyberPower's Liquid i7 Kraken before, but plenty has changed since we saw the original back in September - not least the price, which has dropped by more than £400. We all know a price drop means a reduction in power and quality, right?

Wrong. The new Liquid i7 Kraken takes a Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K and overclocks its core from 3.4GHz to 4.6GHz, producing a massive score of 3.49 in our application benchmarks. That's the same record-breaking figure as the Yoyotech Fi7epower 4.8, and enough to leave non-Sandy Bridge PCs eating their dust: the previous benchmark record was a then-outstanding 2.91.

Replacing the previous Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 is its successor, the GTX 580, and this brings stellar gaming performance. It turned in average frame rates of 57fps in our 1,920 x 1,080 Very High quality Crysis test and 49fps when we enabled 4x anti-aliasing. Pushing it further, it handled 8x and 16x anti-aliasing at averages of 42fps and 35fps respectively. Only when we upped the resolution to a large-format 2,560 x 1,600 did the Kraken prove fallible, with a slightly juddery 27fps at Very High quality and with 4x anti-aliasing activated.

The rest of the specification is fine. As with the original Kraken and most enthusiast-level machines we've seen since, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is loaded from an SSD, but the brand has changed: out goes the popular Intel X25, and in its place comes a 64GB Crucial RealSSD C300. You also get a Blu-ray reader, 1TB of standard hard disk space and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Only the latter looks a little mean alongside rivals that have begun to offer 6GB or even 8GB of memory as standard.

It's all packed into the same Cooler Master CM 690 II Lite chassis, which is differentiated from the Advanced model by the loss of its roof-mounted SATA 3Gb/s port. The chassis offers decent build quality and good looks, even if it can't match the matte-black curves of the Yoyotech.

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Comments

User comments

I worry about these overclocked systems. How long do they actually last?

When I buy a PC like this, I want it to last about 4 years. But the warranty may only cover 1 year.

I have a 3 year old overclocked Chillblast PC now. The graphics card had been replaced twice, and the hard drive once, and that was in the 2 year warranty period. Chillblast have been amazing in replacing these parts, but now I'm out of warranty.

By jagdipa on 20 Jan 2011

CyberPower Liquid i7

Hmmm come on CyberPower, you can't come on here and put someone else down for their "Rig not been available" then do THE SAME with YOUR RIG.... its no where to be seen on your site, gives us a clue ....ta

Nice rig, shame you can't buy it!
By CyberpowersystemUK on 19 Jan 2011

By Gold_coast on 20 Jan 2011

Look after them and they'll last years. Let the fans clog up with smoke, hair and dust and they'll fail. Watercooling the graphics really helps them last as they don't get as big a temperature swing as air-cooled cards and as you say, they are usually the first thing to fail due to repeated heat stress.

By CyberpowersystemUK on 20 Jan 2011

my carerra(they don't exist anymore) lasted 3 years with no faults before i started upgrading it. The processor and graphics card were heavily overclocked.

By TimoGunt on 20 Jan 2011

The overclocking on my Cyberpower PC lasted less than 6 months.

I am grateful to have my PC working now.

The good thing is we haven't needed the radiator on in our office this Christmas.

By revsorg on 24 Jan 2011

A List

Mike,

Could you possibly tell us why this didn't make the A List and the Yoyotech Fi7epower 4.8 did ... was it down to price ???

Thanks in advance

Gc

By Gold_coast on 24 Jan 2011

A List

Gold_coast,

Thanks for your comment. Neither machine has been left off the A List: the Yoyotech now tops our High-End PC category thanks to its sub-£1,000 exc VAT price, and the CyberPower has entered into our Enthusiast PC category due to its higher price.

Hope that clears it up!

Cheers,

Mike

By Mikey_Jennings on 25 Jan 2011

A List

Mike

Thanks for clearing that up, I'm tempted to go and buy the"CyberPower's Liquid i7 Kraken" but think i'll give it another week of so and see what Palicomp and chillblast come up with.

Going off their past offering, I would expect both companies to come in with some very good "Sandy Bridge" rigs

Gc

By Gold_coast on 25 Jan 2011

Reviews

hopefully Palicomp will send you the new "Phoenix Hydro-X" to review ...it looks a belter !!

Gc

By Gold_coast on 25 Jan 2011

Sandy Bridge

Mike

Is there any plans for PCPRO to do a Sandy Bridge computer super test in the next month or so ???

Thanks in advance

Gc

By Gold_coast on 28 Jan 2011

A List, reviews etc

Hey,

Thanks for all of your comments.

Gold_Coast - I've got a Palicomp system downstairs at the moment. Not sure if it's the Phoenix Hydro-X - I've not done much more than get it out of the box yet - but it's huge and looks like a bit of a monster! I'll be reviewing it either next week or the week after, so keep your eyes peeled.

The reason that I'm not reviewing that system right now is because I'm in the middle of a Sandy Bridge group test which will be in issue 199, released March 10th. They're all Core i5 systems and come with peripherals for £799 exc VAT.

There's eleven of them, and some are fantastic :)

Cheers,

Mike

By Mikey_Jennings on 28 Jan 2011