Inside The Ultimate SLI Quad
The CyberPower system came in a stylish Coolermaster Stacker 830 case, which would look fine in an office, home or LAN party setting. The case has plenty of places for additional cooling, as it can support four fans on the side in sizes up to 140 mm. The system was powered by a PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 850-W power supply.
Unlike CyberPower machines we saw in the past, the cabling was a little less than what we desired.It was wrapped and moved out of the way of the motherboard, but it was bunched up next to the 3.5" and 5.25" bays. The installed 120 mm fan at the front of the case was almost pushing air into a wall of cables. While this was not a detriment to performance in our tests, "cooler is better", and for the long run, the cables should have been organized better.
The motherboard was the Asus A8N32-SLI. It had an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor with 2 GB of Corsair TWINX2048-4400PRO. The CPU was cooled with a retail AMD cooler with four heatpipes. The system can support up to three hard drives.
The video cards were secured with an SLI adapter depressor to ensure that the SLI adaptor and the video card wouldn’t come loose and reek havoc with the system. We are very appreciative of this added touch, since we are looking at nearly $1,000 alonefor the graphics cards in this system.
The Cyberpower system included the Creative Inspire P7800 7.1 surround sound speaker system and a Logitech mouse and keyboard. In addition to the USB and Firewire ports on the front of the case below the temperature control were floppy drive, memory stick, SD, compact flash and microdrive media slots. A DVD-ROM and dual-layer DVD burner rounded out the system as a total media solution. Several cables and adapters make sure the output on the video cards meets the needs of the new owner.
CyberPower includes a restore disk just in case your system needs a good clearing when Microsoft Windows decides to go schizophrenic or if there is a catastrophic failure. A copy of the motherboard manual - and to make sure customers can utilize their DVD drives - a copy of WinDVD Suite that come in the retail motherboard box. A CD with the special drivers for the all-in-one memory card reader is also provided.
Cyberpower has deals and rebates for the coupon clippers out there. Free game download coupons, and separate mail-in rebates for certain parts can be found on this system. This system currently retails for around $4,500 (July 2006) and that price could come down as new processors are arriving on the scene. This system is certainly the less expensive of the two.
