CyberPower Gamer Infinity Xfire GT Pro review

The looks of this PC are certainly striking. The huge 220mm intake fan at the front is more than just aesthetic, as it sucks in plenty of air, crucial for a high-performance PC. However, it's blocked by the hard disk caddy behind it, so an equally massive side intake fan is needed as well, pushing air onto all the hot components and out the rear. WiFi capability is usefully built into the motherboard.

Sound decisions?

Slightly lost underneath that huge graphics card is a Creative X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card. It's welcome and yet confusing. The card has the 24-bit Crystallizer and the surround sound wizardry that's helped the X-Fi gain its positive reputation. They combine to give MP3s and so forth a richer quality, with even poorly encoded tracks sounding cleaner. What's wrong with that? Well, the Extreme Audio doesn't do anything for gaming. There's no fancy EAX 5 support for surround sound game effects. And that's very odd indeed for a machine with 'Gamer' in its name. To add to our disappointment, the bundled 5.1 Creative Inspire T6100 speakers are too basic to do the X-Fi justice.

Given the mixed bag of internals, we were glad to find the supplied monitor was generally very good. As a physical object it wasn't too distracting, nor particularly flimsy or cheap-feeling. And the display was definitely on the good side of average, with a dark black and a bright, acceptably clean white. You can use the monitor at maximum brightness and dial up the contrast a couple of notches to get the best results, and once that's done you've got a screen that's bright and vibrant and displays colours accurately. It even handles shadowy areas of photos well, with a good level of detail and texture. Cheaper screens render shadows as blocks of black, as they simply can't distinguish between dark greys, and the results are very distracting. Not so here, making this panel a welcome addition to the system.

This flawed but interesting system is guaranteed for no less than three years, although through all of those the terms are return to base (RTB), so you'll have to send the machine back to its maker if you need warranty service.