CyberPowerPC's Gamer Xtreme 4000: Now with Sandy Bridge
by Dustin Sklavos on January 4, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- CyberPowerPC
- NVIDIA
Conclusion: Great at $1,399
With the CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 4000 we potentially run into the same problem we had with their 8500: we were quoted a substantially lower price tag than the one that actually made it to market. At the quoted price the 8500 was a fine deal, while the actual price was a lot less inspiring. The 4000 is an improvement, but that's only if they can hit the low $1,399 price.
That said, the complaints leveled at the 4000 are mild compared to other boutique builds. The case feels a little chintzy and isn't the best-looking one available by a long shot, but it does offer solid connectivity that CyberPower further augments with a standard media reader. This is rounded out by the excellent motherboard choice in the form of the ASUS P8P67, which has all the modern (and legacy!) ports you could ask for and frankly embarasses the DigitalStorm BlackOps that costs more than twice as much.
I would've liked to have seen an SSD as the OS drive now that even an Intel X25-V (last seen in the Xtreme 8500) can be had for under $100, but that's not a tremendous strike against the 4000—you can always add one on your own down the road. And finally, the overclock on the i7-2600K is an improvement over other boutique builds both in terms of the clock speed available on Sandy Bridge, but some more finely-grained voltage tuning wouldn't have hurt. 1.35V at peak load isn't horrible but it's not really great, either. We'll have to see what other vendors can manage with SNB in the coming months.
The flipside to all of this is that the overclocked Intel Core i7-2600K is ridiculously fast, and the eVGA SuperClocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 is an excellent choice to pair with it. Single-monitor gamers are liable to get their money's worth out of this build, but again, that's assuming CyberPower hits that $1,399 price point. Breaking down the overall cost if you were to try and assemble this system from NewEgg, you're looking at nearly $700 just for the video card and processor alone. Tack on an extra $100 each for the power supply, cooling, and case, and we're already at a grand. That's before you get to the blu-ray drive, hard drive, memory, and motherboard.
We're left with an excellent representative of both Intel's new architecture and how good a boutique desktop deal can get. The Gamer Xtreme 4000 isn't perfect, but it's fairly sound and would be easy enough to recommend even at $1,499. If they're able to make it available at $1,399 and you're not interested in building your own machine, I see no reason not to go for it.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I believe the overclock applies to all the Turbo modes. So the 4.4GHz is for single-threaded, and you'd get lower than that for dual-core/multi-core operation. Intel didn't specifically list the Turbo states for the desktop chips (see my SNB Mobile article for comparison, where they explicitly list what SC, DC, and QC can Turbo up to), but if they do something similar to the mobile parts then you should still see up to ~4.0GHz even when loading all four cores.JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Edit: Okay, maybe this is the correct info from a different slide. Intel appears to state that on the desktop CPUs, Max Turbo is +4 bins for SC, +3 bins for DC, +2 bins for TC, and +1 bin for QC. That means if you set the Max Turbo to 4.4GHz, quad-core could still hit 4.1GHz (assuming temperatures are acceptable).Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Hmm, ok. Still seams a bit confusing the way they have it written. If its +1 but for QC, wouldn't that mean 1 bin up from the base clock? So if you over clocked the turbo from 3.8 to 4.4 thats effectively 600MHz, so 600Mhz over 3.4GHz is 4GHz?JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Yeah, that's what I'm not sure about. Can you raise the max Turbo for SC/DC/TC/QC separately? I don't think so, but I don't have any desktop hardware so I can't say for sure. It would make more sense to have the DC/TC/QC Turbo be Max - 1/2/3 in my book. I believe there's also some stuff in the BIOS where you can set the thermal/power range on the CPU (Ian mentioned this in the ASRock mobo review I think? Or maybe it was Anand's article....) I guess right now I'm stuck looking for information as well, while I long for SNB hardware other than the notebook I got. :-)cyberpowerpc - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Just to clarify some concerns regarding the OC:The 4.4 GHz OC is modest for Sandy Bridge. We could have easily shipped a 4.8/4.9 GHz system but feel that we did not want to ship a system with an Overclock that we, in the end, may not support.
Additionally, for the max turbo ratio, you can individually set what the DC/TC/QC turbo. In the review system, the max turbo ratio was set to x44 and that applies to DC/TC/QC.
7Enigma - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Thank you for the reply, but what you are basically saying is you chose a single (modest) multiplier and put it for all DC/TC/QC values. Why would you choose the same number when the thermals should be vastly different (ie DC multiplier should be significantly higher than the QC multiplier)?I think you just confirmed how basic this "OC" really was.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Thanks for replying. It clears up the question that I had regarding the various turbo speeds.However, why not set the turbo speed for DC to a higher level than TC or QC? It should be easily doable from a thermal standpoint, unless testing showed this to not be true and/or some other issue came up.
I understand not wanting to go too far and then not be able to support it, that makes perfect sense from your point of view. however.
MeanBruce - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Sandy-M LGA-1055 does seem amazing, yet for those who don't know Sandy-E LGA-2011 is due in July. Native USB 3.0, LightPeak support, the new X-68 chipset, Quad-Channel memory, integrated north bridge, now that's worth waiting 6months for! The enthusiast platform CPU, Mainboard, and Memory, should cost only $200 to $250 more, well worth the investment!JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I didn't think X68 (or whatever) was slated to get USB3.0, though I haven't really looked into that I admit. LightPeak might be nice though.strikeback03 - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
According to Anand's article, SNB-E won't be until Q4, i.e. October at the earliest http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridg...