Cyberpower Achilles Pro 4K Gaming System Review

Cyberpower Achilles Pro 4K Gaming System Review

Manufacturer: Cyberpower
UK price (as reviewed): £1,999 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): N/A

If you're looking for the ultimate gaming experience, it's still a toss-up between triple screens and 4K. The latter does have its advantages, such as epic sharpness and also less desk space requirements, however, all those pixels make things pretty tough on any PC. In fact, despite 60Hz 4K monitors coming down in price to less than £500/$700, you'd need to factor in a monster PC to get playable frame rates at maximum settings in most of today's demanding games.


Cyberpower has recently sent us its effort at a sub £2,000 4K gaming PC - the Achilles Pro 4K. However, the £1,999 price tag includes AOC's 28in U2868PQU 60Hz 4K monitor too so in reality the cost is closer to £1,500 for the base unit. The monitor sports a 10-bit TN panel (8-bit +FRC), MHL video streaming and also has two a piece of USB 2 and USB 3 ports on the underside as well as a stand that sports rotation, tilt and height adjustment. Cyberpower has chosen NZXT's luscious H440 to provide a home for the hardware and we have to say that the white model included does look very tidy indeed.


There are two USB 3 ports on the top along with two USB 2 ports along with headphone and microphone jacks but apart from this, the H440 is very minimalist and despite its size, it excludes an external optical drive so as to not spoil the aesthetics. You can of course buy an external one, but it's a brave move both from NZXT and Cyberpower. Even if your OS is preinstalled in the form of Windows 8.1, it's perhaps a PC for the Spotify/Netflix/Steam/Origin generation.


The interior looks just as good as the exterior, partly thanks to the H440's PSU cover, which hides all those pesky cables away for a cleaner look. However, we have to pat Cyberpower on the back here for some great cable tidying and this extends to the rear of the motherboard tray too. The interior is illuminated green using an LED strip next to the top fans; this isn't too garish, though, as the light shines down and won't be in direct view even if the case is on your desk.

Cooling-wise, the H440 is a high airflow case and sports three 120mm front fans and one rear 140mm fan as standard. Cyberpower has done away with the latter and included a Corsair H60 all-in-one liquid cooler instead, with two 120mm in a push-pull configuration on the radiator, exhausting air from the case. It's also dropped in two 140mm fans in the roof to balance out the cooling too.


To deal with the high demands of the monitor, Cyberpower has kitted out the PC pretty much the same way we would have given the financial constraints. There's obviously no AMD Radeon R9 295X2 here, which is the only single card we consider able to play demanding games at 4K with all the bells and whistles turned on. However, it's essentially opted for the next best thing, which is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti (in the form of an MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming 3G LE), which topped several of our 4K benchmarks when we reviewed it , and is a solid choice for a balanced 4K system at this price. This particular model sports an up-rated dual-fan cooler and 26MHz overclock on the GPU core boost clock speed, which sits at 954MHz as opposed to 928MHz for a stock card.


The CPU is also a great choice - Intel's Core i7-4790K sits at the heart of the Achilles Pro 4K, and has been overclocked to 4.5GHz using a vcore of 1.28V. Kingston provides the memory and it sits at 1,866MHz with 8GB total. We might have liked to see 16GB here, but in reality, no game will see your system use more than 5-6GB in total so this will still provide plenty of headroom.


Storage is provides by a 240GB Kingston V300 SSD and 1TB Western Digital Blue hard disk, while an Asus PCE-N15 300Mbps 802.11n WiFi card is also included, should you want to connect to a distant router rather than use the motherboard's Ethernet port. Speaking of the motherboard, Cyberpower has opted for Asus' Maximus VII Ranger, so you'll have access to all the useful software tools this fantastic montherboard offers as well. Rounding off the specification is a 750W Corsair PSU.


Specifications

• CPU Intel Core i7-4790K overclocked to 4.5GHz
  
• Motherboard Asus Maximus VII Ranger
  
• RAM 8GB 1,866MHz Kingston HyperX
  
• Graphics card MSI GTX 780Ti Gaming 3G LE
  
• Case NZXT H440
  
• CPU Cooler Corsair H60
  
• Storage 1TB WD Blue, 240GB Kingston V300
  
• Operating system Windows 8.1
  
• Warranty3 Year Labour, 2 Year Parts, 1 Month Collect and Return plus Life-Time Technical Support