Cyberpower has always had a soft landing among gamers, and the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme GXi10040A2 religiously sticks to the tradition of well-designed systems with fiery gaming performance. The design insanely screams ‘gamer’ with all the gaily lighting and color themes across the chassis–if you’re in the market for a rig that looks like a gaming system it is, it might work for you.
It shines in the midrange gaming category thanks to a seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processor and Pascal graphics card, and a decent array of ports. You’ll have to endure at least two major annoyances with it, no SSD and only 8GB memory, but overall it subtly balances performance and features at a nice price. Still, it lacks the muscle to unseat the ASUS G11CD-DB73-GTX1080 gaming desktop that combines an Intel core i7 processor, Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card lots of system memory and tons of storage.
Design and Features
There’s no doubt, the Xtreme GXi10040A2 is made to be seen, with a ‘Sci-Fi’ inspired lighting, that makes the system look like your games are being powered by extraterrestrial life from space. This is particularly on the front: A black-grilled chassis, with three color-changing rings of light that give it the appearance of a futuristic, living and thinking machine.
There’s a window on the left-side panel to allow you marvel at the surprisingly accented interior–there is much going in there with soft light glows from a set of LEDs that extend to the upper deck. We’re now seeing customizable lighting in such a configuration of up to eight million color options, and that adds up to the futuristic aesthetics.
Apart from the circuit lightings, the medium tower is just the usual understated Cyberpower design line. If you’ve liked the earlier models, you’ll probably like this one, but there’s no question that it screams gaming, which might be exactly what you want. It measures It measures 18.8 by 7.9 by 20 inches (HWD), almost the same size as the CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Supreme Liquid Cool SLC8420A (18.5 by 8.2 by 18.5 inches) and a fair amount smaller than the iBUYPOWER AM002i (21.38 by 12.5 by 25 inches).
If you fancy something that is really powerful but space saving, the ASUS G11CD-DB73 our midrange Editors’ Choice, measures only 17.3 by 6.9 by 16.6 inches. The GXi10 also ships with a basic but satisfying mechanical keyboard and a mouse. No monitor is included, you might have to buy one separately, the ViewSonic XG2700-4K isn’t a bad choice either.
Like most boutique-built gaming PCs, the Xtreme GXi10040A2 isn’t built for DIY work. It comes as it is. The interior is well set, you might only be able to do minimal upgrades here-and-there, let’s say memory and storage. There’s a little room for some additions inside, but for the most part it’s complete. You have a slot to upgrade the memory and can as well throw in an SSD since the system comes with a mechanical hard drive.
As-is, there’s 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB 7,200 rpm hard drive. Still wondering why not have even a 128GB SSD in such a superb rig, but it isn’t a deal-breaker as such…is it? You have a lot to install an SSD down the road if need be.
Connectivity
Port options are good, though, selection is at the middle of the road. A USB Type-C port is conspicuously missing, and all you have is a total of 9 normal-use USB ports–five USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. A Type-C port would have been more advantageous as it offers support for multiple standards seamlessly, lately we’re seeing up to two of them in most gaming PCs.
The GeForce card supports all the important video outputs you’d ever need: HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort, meaning all monitors are seamlessly supported, you can fire up your desktop to an array of three displays. Internet connectivity comes via an RJ-45 port, but for wireless you’ll have to do with a simple USB Wi-Fi dongle. Also, the system doesn’t come with an optical drive, so you’ll have to grab an external DVD burner. These omissions are many, only that they aren’t the essentials in gaming.
Performance
The Cyberpower GXi10040A2 uses the latest flagship of the new generation Intel Core desktop processors, code-named “Kaby Lake”, which is a successor to the previous generation of sixth-generation “Sky Lake” processors. The Intel i7-7700K processor, is a quad-core CPU with 4.2GHz clock speed, but can hit upwards of 4.5GHz during intense gaming.
To that, add a the latest Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card with 8GB paired with 8GB DDR4 system memory and all you have is an insanely powerful gaming rig. As a result, this system’s performance is much better than similar graphics cards but equipped with Intel Core i7-6700K processors, like our Editors’ Choice Asus G11CD-DB73-GTX1080.
On the other hand, the combination of a snappy 512 SSD and 16GB paired with a potent processor, albeit sixth-generation, give the latter an upperhand, as both are equipped with the same GTX 1080 cards. In other words, the Cyberpower GXi10040A2 is incredibly fast, though as usual, gaming isn’t all about sheer horsepower, but the same comers into paly when you’re handling video transcoding or other software-based CGI project rendering, whereby you need more cores.
For gaming, the Cyberpower crunches the numbers well will steady Frames Per Second (FPS) rates on most modern titles even at high-to-ultra settings, including: Battlefield 4 (+81FPS); GTA 4 (+80FPS); and, The Witcher (+50FPS), which put it a league of its own, taking it closer to high-end gaming rigs. Speaking of gaming, you’ll be impressed that the system is ready for multi-monitor gaming, or whatever else you see fit to play right now.
Conclusion
The CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme GXi10040A2 is one of those PCs that are configured to be faster than your standard desktop thanks to its gaming-focused components, and can crunch through daily tasks and media projects with ease. Combining the latest Intel Core i7-7700K processor and NVidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card and still ensuring that the price doesn’t shoot of the roof isn’t a mean feat.
However, tradeoffs such as lack of an SSD, an optical drive, lack of Wi-Fi and mediocre connectivity are still painful enough, but aren’t deal breakers per se. Where it gets tough is in comparison to the Asus G11CD-DB73-GTX1080, which also performs favorably well and shines well in areas where the Gamer Xtreme GXi10040A2 falters.
It does that by including a snappy 512GB SSD, tons of RAM-16GB to be precise and impressive connectivity options, tough it comes with a 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-6700 Quad-core processor (equally powerful) and is VR Ready. On a feature-by-feature basis, the Asus G11CD-DB73-GTX1080 shines brightly, with better connectivity, tons of memory, ample storage and other future looking features and VR-ready capability, all of which will keep this system relevant for a few more years.
That said, the CyberPowerPC Gamer GXiVR8080A38 is our newest midrange gaming desktop, pairing Intel’s Core i9-14900KF processor and Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card for an immersive 1440p gaming experience.
Recommended Configuration
CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme VR Gaming PC, Intel Core i9-14900KF 3.2GHz, GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12GB, 32GB DDR5, 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD, WiFi Ready & Windows 11 Home (GXiVR8080A38)
The Review
CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Xtreme VR GXiVR8040A2
The CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Xtreme VR GXiVR8040A2 brings into the midrange gaming category a couple of features that are so…so hard to pass by including a Kaby Lake processor and a discrete AMD RX 480 graphics card.
PROS
- A powerful set of components
- Solid performance
- Quite inexpensive for the feature set
CONS
- Lacks Bluetooth
Review Breakdown
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EDITORS RATING
