CyberPower Infinity i5 Achillies XT review

CyberPower’s oddly named Infinity i5 Achilles XT, has an Intel Core i5 750 processor that has been overclocked from its stock speed of 2.66GHz to 3.6GHz. This results in overall benchmark score of 165, which is just one point less than the fastest PC we’ve seen, the Palicomp Ice Blast 750OC-22. The Achilles comes with a Full HD monitor, however, making it far better value on paper.

CyberPower has lined the Achilles’ case with foam rubber matting to reduce noise. Even with intensive CPU tests running, which cause the cooling fans to speed up, the noise was acceptable, only rising slightly in pitch. This is all the more remarkable if you consider that there are a total of seven fans – one at the top of the case, two behind the front grille, one at the rear, plus the processor, graphics card and power supply fans.

There’s still plenty of room inside the case for expansion, with two free memory card slots and four free SATA ports, plus plenty of free drive bays. Sadly, there’s only one free PCI-E x16 slot, the two PCI slots being blocked by the heat sink on the graphics card. However, the Achilles also has a total of 12 USB ports, plus a FireWire and two eSATA ports, so adding external peripherals won’t be a problem. A generous 1TB hard disk means you won’t be running out of storage space for some time.

As well as the overclocked processor, the Achilles comes with our favourite graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 5770. This card is excellent value and helped the Achilles to a score of 72fps in our Call of Duty 4 test and 38fps in Crysis. Even at the display’s native 1,920×1,080 resolution, with settings at High and 4x anti-aliasing, it managed a playable 34fps in Crysis, which is widely considered one of the toughest gaming benchmarks.

The AOC F22s+ monitor has a Full HD resolution, but only a VGA input. This isn’t a major quality issue in itself, but colours lack punch. The combined power and settings button, with a four-way navigation wheel, is a clever idea, but we found the settings themselves to be crude: at the highest contrast setting the picture is far too over-saturated, and the backlight isn’t bright enough. The Magic setting for colour and general image quality was predictably awful, blowing colours out of all proportion.

The supplied Logitech keyboard and mouse are adequate for everyday use, but you’ll probably want to upgrade these at some point. The keyboard’s keys have a spongy action and the mouse is too light, with an ambidextrous design that’s not as comfortable to hold as a specifically-handed mouse.

The Achilles is a fast but quiet PC, with plenty of potential for expansion and a decent set of ports and components, but it’s let down by the monitor – the heel of this particular Achilles. CyberPower will sell you the system without the monitor for £652, and we’d advise you to put the money you save towards a better monitor such as the Iiyama ProLite E2710HDSD-1.