Hello all! I'm here to leave my review on this CyberPowerPC gaming computer. (Just a heads up, this is a LOOOOOONG review, so if you want, you can skip to the bottom for the TL;DR version, or stick around for the sweet deets.) Now I'm not like a super-enthusiast, or professional bench-marker/tester or anything, just a dude who likes to play PC games with the FPS counter on to see how well it's running, and thought I would share my experiences with you today. I do really enjoy PC gaming and was wanting a nice rig to game on with good graphical settings and more importantly, good frame-rates while having it look pretty. So let preface this review with a little history for you.
I have been playing games since I was very young, probably 6. I used to play the point and click kids games from Humongous Entertainment on PC (Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, etc.) as well as Wolfenstein 3D. I moved over to consoles when I was around 8-10 with the N64, GameCube, Original Xbox, Xbox 360, and PS3. When I was in my late teens/early 20's around 2010-2012, I built my first PC for gaming. At the time it was a decent machine, but not super high end by any means. I built it around the specs to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which I recommend to any FPS-RPG & cyberpunk fans). Around 2013-2014, I stopped gaming completely until this year, where I went back and forward between console and PC. I got a gaming PC off Goodwill Online that was alright, but didn't run well because something was wrong with it, and it eventually shorted out.
Cut to now, where I have purchased this CyberPowerPC gaming rig. This is my first purchase of a pre-built gaming PC, and 6-8 years ago I would have scoffed the idea of buying a pre-built vs. building my own. Things are different now, so I'd like to share my personal pros and cons of the machine, but first, since PC gaming is more varied depending on the hardware being used, let me share how some games I played ran on this machine, with a couple things to consider about how my play testing went first:
While I actually want to do this review myself and tell everyone how my personal experience was and share my own honest opinions, I would like to disclose that inside the box for the PC was an offer that said if I leave a review for the product and either take a screenshot of the review or send a link to the review to CyberPowerPC, I'll get a free gaming headset for my computer. So just a heads up, I am supposed to receive a free headset in exchange for leaving my honest review.
Everything below is going to be a bunch of technical PC terminology that if you are unfamiliar with, might not make sense. I'm assuming whoever is reading this knows what I'm talking about, but if you don't, it's OK, the main things to know are that the higher graphics settings are, the better the game will look. The same goes with the resolution, as it will look less grainy with higher resolutions. Frame-rates are basically how smooth the game looks when things happen fast. (If you want to see the comparisons, YouTube a game that is on game consoles & PC, and search that game with 'frame-rate comparison' to get a side-by-side view.)
All games were played in 1920x1080p (Full HD) resolution
Unless otherwise mentioned, all games were through Steam with the FPS counter on.
With a couple exceptions, I only played each game here for a few minutes, to see how it ran at start. If the game gets more resource intensive later in certain spots, the performance might drop below 60FPS with max settings, and may need mild tweaking.
My goal was to play each game with the highest possible graphical settings while maintaining a frame-rate of at least 60FPS.
I like to initially play games with V-Sync off, so that I can see the FPS counter in Steam telling me the frame-rate. My monitor is only 60hz refresh rate, so I am unable to tell you how it might look at anything higher than that, but it's a good way to see what settings you can comfortably run. For example, if I play a game at Low settings and can run it a 350FPS, then I know I have room to increase the graphic settings until it starts to get too close to where I want it to maintain. I want the settings to be able to keep the game around 100FPS, so if there is a load spike in the game, the frame-rate doesn't take a hit that knocks it below 60FPS.
Finally, like I said above, I took about a 4 year break from gaming. Therefore, my library is somewhat outdated. I did try to pick the most modern, popular, and intense games I owned to test with, but that being said, I don't have most of the most popular games like PUBG, Overwatch, Rocket League, etc., so I can't tell you how those run. However, there are websites where you can check your PC specs against the game specs to see if you can run the game, and apparently I can run those game at Recommended settings, but I don't know about Max settings. That's something someone else will have to tell you.
OK, with all that out of the way, let's get to my game-playing experiences.
Bioshock Remastered – Played this with max settings, and was consistently pulling 100+FPS, so no problem here for even frame-rates. The game both looked well and ran well. I will mention that the area on side door where graphic card is did get warmer than it did while playing other games, but didn't seem to affect performance in any noticeable way.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare – Played this game with max settings as well, and I was pulling 60 FPS even with V-sync off, leading me to believe this game might have a capped frame-rate. Everything ran well though, and while it never went above 60FPS, I don't recall any drops below that number either, so that's a plus.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive – One of the main E-Sports games. This might be one that a lot of people are interested in, so I felt obligated to include it. I played CS:GO at max settings, and got 100+ FPS on the maps Shipped & Insertion with V-sync off, 60FPS solid with V-sync on, which is good, because I think these two might be some of the more resource intensive maps to run. Insertion is just huge, and Shipped has lots of water all around, so plenty of effects to run.
Crysis – Ahh Crysis. Anyone who is into PC gaming knows how famous (or perhaps infamous is more appropriate) this game is when it comes to performance. It was notorious for being extremely difficult, maybe near impossible, to run at max settings. It was a beast of a game to handle. I am extremely pleased and proud to say that I was able to play the game at max settings, and got a range of 80-110 FPS. This is impressive because, well, it's Crysis. I would like to point out that the PC did get louder while running this maxed, but not too loud. It was just the sounds of fans kicking in to keep things cool. For this feat alone, I would like to commend this PC & CyberPowerPC, for creating a decent rig that can put down the old gaming meme of 'But can it run Crysis?' Yes. Yes it can.
Dead By Daylight – Another really popular game played by lots of YouTubers, since I got it in a Humble Bundle, thought I'd throw it in the mix. Played at max settings, 60FPS consistently. Like, nothing above that, because I think the frame-rate might be capped here as well. I did get one drop below 60FPS while playing the tutorial, but didn't have that problem again, and it could have just been a loading thing.
Fortnite – OH MY GOD try to look at anything gaming today and not see Fortnite. It is everywhere, on nearly every system and platform imaginable. I won't be surprised if you can play Fortnite on your smart fridge soon. All jokes aside, I played at max settings, getting around 60-70FPS most of the time. This isn't on Steam, but the game does have a built-in FPS counter. This was the first game I played to have noticeable occasional FPS drops below 60. If you tweaked a couple settings to high instead of ultra, you could probably eliminate those drops. And get butter smooth 60FPS.
GTA IV – Grand Theft Auto IV (that's 4, not 5, because I don't have 5 because I'm outdated) was a strange experience performance wise. I got max settings for all the graphical settings like textures, shadows, etc, except for the view distance, vehicle density, and detail distance. Those seemed to cause too many issues at 100, or even around 60-75. I got a little annoyed trying to tune the game myself, so I used the auto-configure button, which set those things around the 25-30 mark. It also set some things on High instead of Very High, but I changed them to Very High while leaving the view distance, etc., and I got around 70ish FPS consistently, but could change in more dense/intense scenes. This one is a game that could use tweaking.
L.A. Noire – Well I was going to play L.A. Noire because I remember it was very impressive even on the PS3, and thought it would look amazing with this computer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to run. Now, before you start trash-talking this computer for not running a 7 year old game, I would like to point out that I did some research, and other Steam users are having the same problem. There are different fixes one could try for it, but I didn't feel like messing with that for now.
Minecraft – So Minecraft is another one of those games like Fortnite that is everywhere and in everything, and also isn't on Steam, and while it doesn't have a built-in FPS counter, I was able to run it with the Steam overlay, so I could use the Steam FPS counter. Naturally, I had bought it years ago and wanted to test it on my new gaming PC. Funny enough, for a game where the entire world is made of blocks, and is not very detailed, I actually had more trouble with this game than any other one. I was able to run max graphical settings, but that comes with an asterisk like GTA IV, because the view distance was what game me trouble, along with something called biome-blending, which I assume means that when the environments change, how much they transition so it is not just a sudden 'Whoa I was next to a forest and now there's a beach 3 steps this way' I had to drop the chunk distance down to 15, and the biome blending at either 5x5 or 7x7, I don't remember which one worked. I had to tweak it so much for my consistent frame-rate, but I did manage 100FPS eventually. At first I had changed the Field Of View to Quake Pro (Max FOV), but dropped it back down to normal, while trying to get steady frames. I might be able to bring it back up and still have good frame-rates, but I didn't test that.
Payday 2 – I got Payday 2 to run at max settings, hitting 100+FPS after loading the level. There's a small starting window while the game finished loading the level where it was choppy, but smoothed out afterwards. Since one of the settings is how many bodies stay on screen, the frame-rate could drop in levels where bodies would stack in large amounts, but I'm not sure, because I didn't play that long to get to that point.
Portal 2 – I know Portal 2 is really old but I was rummaging though my library for the best games I could find for testing and I wanted this in there. Played at max settings, and got a whopping 200+FPS for this gem.
Resident Evil 6 – Another old game, but still ran at max settings, at 120FPS. I think the frame-rate is capped here as well, but I must say, I love Resident Evil and this game looked fantastic on this PC.
SUPERHOT – SUPERHOT is special to me in this review for a few reasons. It is the only game I played without Steam's FPS counter or a built-in one, so I have no FPS numbers for you here. It is also the game I decided to break my gaming PC in with, so it's my first game on this rig, and it's also the only game I played and finished during all this testing out the PC. Since I have no counter, I don't know the quantifiable FPS amount, but I can tell you I played at max settings, and while I may have gotten one or two stutters, I can't specifically remember them like I could in Minecraft, Fortnite, and GTA IV. Also, this is a really awesome game. One of the most innovative shooters I've played in years. ;)
Team Fortress 2 – Valve's quintessential shooter. Few PC gamers probably HAVEN'T played some TF2, and it runs at max settings at 100+FPS. Very nice, now if only people will spy check...
That was all my PC gaming experience so far with this rig. It ran nearly everything I threw at it on max settings with almost always have a minimum of 60FPS, with a few exceptions. It kind of goes without saying that virtually any game that is mainly 2D graphics will run exceptionally well with no problems (Think things like visual novels, FTL: Faster Than Light, Organ Trail, Hotline Miami, etc.), and on those 2D/low resource games, it might even be do-able to run them at 4K resolution, but I haven't tried that yet, so no promises.
Now that the performance section is done, I'd like to talk about the pros and cons of the machine itself.
I'll start with hardware. This machine packs a real punch for all its internals, but first, the outside of the machine. Simply, it's gorgeous. You get what feels like a ATX mid-tower that isn't too bulky, and is just as amazing/incredible/slightly ominous looking as it looks in the photos (after all, its a beast of a machine inside, and it looks it on the outside). You get a tinted transparent front cover with some nice geometry lines, and a giant see-through panel, also tinted, on the side to see all the guts of the computer in their glory. You have your standard power button/reset switch combo on the front, along with 2 USB 3.0 ports, a headphone jack, and a mic jack. One thing I have to comment on with that headphone jack, is that I have an external 2.1 speaker system, plugged into the rear 3.5mm jack. When I use my headphones on the front jack, the audio will play through both outputs at once instead of toggling between them if the headphones are plugged in or not. I'm not sure if this is a con or not, but just be mindful to turn off your speakers if you don't want anyone else to hear what you're hearing. You also have 4 red LED 'halo ring' fans inside, three up front and one in the back. I would like to point out that the LEDs in the fans are just red, they aren't RGB like the mouse is. It would be nice if the fans were RGB also, but honestly, at the price point for this PC, that would be unrealistic, as RGB parts aren't particularly cheap. I'm not totally sure, because the fans turn while on, and this machine has spent very little time off since it has been in my possession, but I think they are Apevia branded fans. They do the job though, as the machine gets warm while playing, like any computer does, but never seems to get too warm, probably no more than a game console would get when playing. The area on the side panel above the graphic card does get warm and even somewhat hot when playing more intense games, but I'm impressed with this machine's ability to cool down quickly after playing. It doesn't take long to get back down to normal temps. Those same fans also are remarkably quiet. Like, I can't even hear the things unless I actually put my ear about 3 inches from the front of the case. I do have an window AC in my room about 8 feet from my desk, so there may be mild fan noise, but it's pretty mild. Like I mentioned above, they did get audibly louder while running Crysis, but that was the only time I heard noise, and it wasn't bad.
On the inside, you get a Intel i5-8400 processor, which is very good for gaming (check the benchmark score online, it's pretty sweet for the money), which is cooled by what looks like a stock cooler. I would have liked to seen a different cooler, maybe a Cooler Master or something, but the intel one is low profile, and because of that it doesn't obstruct air-flow, so having a different cooler might be a mixed bag. According to my motherboard manual (yes, they actually give you the manual like you would have if you built it yourself) my rig came with a MSI H370M/B360M Bazooka motherboard, which has 4 RAM slots, supports 64GB of RAM, at speeds of 2666/2400/2133 MHz. The board has one PCI 3.0x16 slot, so there is no dual vid cards with this rig, but that's alright by me. Some other reviews mentioned they got 2 sticks of 4GB RAM, but I, like some others, got a single stick of 8GB RAM. I must say I prefer this, as if I want to upgrade my RAM, I can buy a single other 8GB stick and still have two more free RAM slots. I know I don't get the dual-channel benefits right now with one stick, but I don't know that it's going to make a difference for most people.
You get a AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU, which is a fantastic graphic card. It's about the equivalent of a NVIDIA GTX 1060, for the NVIDIA fans out there. Being the powerhouse it is, the card is large and equipped with dual fans to stay cool during intense gaming. You also get a 1TB HDD with the PC, which leads me to one of my only (and honestly, quite nitpicky) negatives about this machine. The former of the two options I'm about to present would be preferred, but either would be good, and that is, why is there not SSD boot drive here for the OS, or if not that, simply a 2TB regular HDD? SSDs have gotten very affordable, and could have been thrown in here to hold the OS and your basic programs, and games could go on the HDD, and it would have made a HUGE performance increase on this already impressive machine. Barring that, why not simply a 2TB HDD instead of a 1TB? The price difference between the two is a matter of around $15, but with games getting larger as graphics get better, 2TB would have been a welcome inclusion. Nonetheless, it is a very trivial thing to gripe about, and I will move on.
Onward to the software side of things, you get Windows 10 Home 64-bit with this machine, which is nice. Few people have need for the Pro version of Windows, so adding that would be unnecessary added cost. Windows 10 apparently has a lot of gaming-friendly features, like screenshoting, video clip recording, broadcasting (to where, I don't know, maybe Mixer?) and something called Game Mode, which I think is supposed to be like a performance boosting thing, but I haven't used it yet. I tried to use it on Minecraft, but I couldn't access the hotkey shortcut once the game started. One thing I am a little disappointing with is the lack of a Windows disk for reinstalling the OS. This particular thing stings a little extra since there isn't a SSD or a larger HDD, so if you wanted to add one of those things, I don't know how you would reinstall Windows. Perhaps if you contacted CyberPowerPC they could be of assistance with this, I intend to contact and find out, as I would like to eventually get a SSD boot drive and upgraded HDD.
Finally, I would like to wrap this review up by talking about the included peripherals. In addition to the PC tower itself, you also get a wired gaming mouse & keyboard, along with a wireless USB 802.11 AC WiFi adapter. So, first the mouse. Honestly, I love it. I think it may be the best mouse I've ever owned. I never had a Razer or any of the big name brands, but it feels to me like something you would pay decent money for. You have your main 2 buttons and wheel, along with 2 buttons by the wheel for DPI switching, and then 4 buttons on the side. From what I can tell, they are page forward and page back buttons, the one in the middle between those two seems to be a double-click button, and then one that seems to change the color of the mouse, but also seems to change the DPI with it. Basically, I'm not totally sure how to change the color while leaving the DPI at my preferred setting. I'll thumb through the documentation again, but I didn't see anything about how to do such things with the mouse. So if it's there and I missed it, my bad, if not, CyberPowerPC should include some docs for this and the keyboard, simply so I can make the most of it. Also, real quick, all those extra buttons on the mouse I mentioned? I don't think they are programmable cause I didn't notice any software to setup macros for it, and they seemed to be more for general use than gaming (although they may be mappable in-game, I didn't try to keymap anything to those buttons in a game).
The keyboard is fantastic, and I absolutely love the feel when gaming and typing. It's not quite mechanical or membrane, and I THINK it says this on the box, but man I love it. It's all black keycaps except for the arrows, WASD, and multimedia keys, which are red, so that the WASD keys are easy to find at a glance if you lose your finger positioning. Also, one thing that I really appreciate is the dedicated multimedia keys on the sides of the keyboard. You have a music player button, play/pause, mute, internet browser on the left side, and previous, volume up, volume down, and forward buttons on the right. I honestly don't care about these for any reason other than the volume. I use Google Play Music for my music streaming and don't actually own MP3s, so the play/forward/back buttons are useless to me there, but the volume buttons are amazing. I like this so much in a keyboard because my last gaming keyboard combined volume controls with some of the F Function keys, so if I wanted to turn down the volume in game, I had to hit Fn+F whatever. I could use both hands, but I liked keeping a hand on the mouse while gaming, so I usually stretched my left hand across the board for volume control. Same thing while watching YouTube. With this, I just tap the key of choice for volume control with one finger. Seems trivial, I know, but I honestly love this keyboard and mouse so much that I looked at the CyberPowerPC website to see if I could buy another one of each in the event I have to replace them. That's how good they are to me.
Finally, the WiFi adapter. It's not the fastest Mbps speed in the world, but if you need WiFi and dual-band AC connectivity, you've got it now. Personally, I just use Ethernet since my router is about 3 inches away from my PC, as hardwire connections are always going to be more reliable than WiFi. No interference, faster steady speed, etc. Now, I did end up needing this thing for another computer in our home, as the WiFi adapter we bought for it was a real piece of crap, so it worked out in this instance, but personally, I would have rather had an included Bluetooth adapter vs WiFi, as I have Bluetooth headphones that I use. Well, now that I've droned on for this long, it's time to wrap this up, as I've said all I could really say about this computer.
TL;DR Every game I threw at it ran well with few exceptions, and those only needed minor graphic drops to increase performance to acceptable ranges. It'll play Fortnite, CS:GO, at max/near max settings, and it should be able to run PUBG, Overwatch, and Rocket League at recommended spec as well. It's silent nearly all the time. It gets warm/hot during more intense gaming, but not too hot, and cools down quickly. There's good airflow, good components inside, and a good experience to be had here. Would I have liked an SSD or larger HDD? Sure, but in the grand scheme of this PC it's something one could live without for the price (or at least until you added one in yourself for cheap). You get a great mouse and keyboard to game with, and while I'd like a manual (that may be here and I just missed) for the mouse so I could learn how to work the freakin' LEDs on it, these are all extremely minor issues. There's no real deal breaker to be found with this. I was able to get this PC because the base price was cheap, but the reason I'm writing this review on the actual PC is because I could afford it now through the Amazon Payments thing. $750 chopped up into 5 payments of around $140 so I can game now? Yes please. If you are like me, and just want a good gaming PC, even if you know about all this stuff, it's hard to go wrong with this one. If you want to be able to have dual-vid cards or extreme enthusiast level stuff like that, you might be better off building your own, as that's gonna be a specialty thing anyways. Most people, like myself, who can't spend $2K buying something akin to a NASA prototype will be extremely happy gaming here.
After all, it can run Crysis. ;)
| Processor | 2.8 GHz core_i5 |
|---|---|
| RAM | 8 GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB HDD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Radeon™ RX 580 |
| Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ab |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 6 |
