CyberPowerPC's Gamer Xtreme 4000: Now with Sandy Bridge

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.