CyberPower Gamer Infinity 935 OC review

CyberPower prides itself on producing beefy gaming units, but look hard enough and you'll find that a few of its PCs are more like all-rounders. That's why we decided to review the Gamer Infinity 935 OC, which is a highly capable Core 2 Duo system - no matter what its intended purpose.

The first thing we noted when setting the system up was how much the NZXT tower was overshadowed by the vast 22-inch monitor from Yuraku. They may look like a mismatched pair, but they're a strong combination in computing terms.

The case itself sports a gaming look along the Alienware lines that won't be to everyone's tastes, but housed inside is a machine that doesn't flinch at high-end gaming or running demanding applications simultaneously.

Any £800 PC hitting 5.6 on the Windows Experience Index and 5.69x in speed and graphics tests such as Cinebench 9.5 deserves attention, and that's precisely what we have here. It also achieved an impressive score of 8,878 in 3DMark without SLI. Add another 8800 GTS for around £180 and this PC would be a gaming powerhouse.

Under the hood is some serious hardware with a solid Asus P5K SE Intel motherboard at the heart, a Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz processor that's overclocked to 2.98GHz, 2GB of premium RAM from Nvidia and a 580W Hiper PSU. There's little here that would need an upgrade any time soon.

Silent but deadly

It looks like a gaming PC and can be used to that end, but what we didn't expect was how we could tap into this much power with so little noise. With two 120mm fans acting as the case's airflow solution we would normally be on the receiving end of a distracting hum, especially with a large graphics card. To our surprise there was a distinct absence of noise, even though the chip had been pre-overclocked.

It certainly helps having a stock Intel cooler over a dedicated gaming cooler, which are known to be noisy no matter how silent they claim to be, but nevertheless we were impressed by how quiet and cool the unit remained.

Using CoreTemp we determined that the CPU temperature hovered around 40 degrees. That's more than adequate for most uses, but bear in mind that under load, temperatures rise and stock CPU coolers do become noisier as a result of working that bit harder.

We found the system hard to fault. The case was a bit too plasticky for our liking, and unfortunately was slightly cracked when we unpacked it for review, but the clear side window panel is a nice touch if you want to know what's going on inside. It's also very light.

The monitor showcases Vista nicely, but with only an analogue input it's not ideal for a 22-inch widescreen. A good-quality wireless mouse, keyboard and wired speakers from Logitech complete the package. If you can live with the stylised look of this CyberPower you'll have an all-round PC to be proud of.