CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme review: High style, affordable price, but loud

CyberPowerPC attempts to be all things to all people with systems aimed at gamers on a low budget and players with deep pockets. Our Gamer Xtreme review unit definitely skews to the budget end of the spectrum with a price tag of just $1,099.

That price gets you a Core Ultra 200 Series CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB SSD, and an RTX 5060 GPU. Throw in a stylish case and RGB lighting galore, and you'll see that CyberPowerPC aims to please people on a budget with the Gamer Xtreme.

Design of the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme

The latest edition of the Gamer Xtreme utilizes a Phanteks NV5 mid-tower case. It’s an interesting design constructed of black-painted stainless steel with a glass front and a glass side panel to give you an unobstructed view of the system's interior components. There’s also plenty of ventilation, with a grill on the right-side panel for three vertically-mounted 120mm RGB fans. The top panel also includes ventilation, with support for another three 120 mm fans or a 360 mm radiator (although our review unit didn’t have the additional fans) and a removable dust filter. There’s a fourth 120mm RGB fan at the rear of the case for exhaust.

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In addition to the RGB fans, there’s a light strip at the base of the front glass, and another light strip that traces the “ramp” housing the power supply. The final piece to the lighting scheme is the air cooler for the CPU, which features a 120mm RGB fan.

The case offers good cable management options, with all of the power cables routing beneath the motherboard, mainly leaving uninterrupted airflow to keep everything nice and cool.

The Gamer Xtreme measures 9.4 x 18.8 x 20.8 inches. For comparison, the CyberPower Gamer Supreme has dimensions of 19.5 x 9.3 x 18.1 inches, and the iBuyPower Y40 Pro comes in at 18.58 x 17.28 x 9.44 inches

CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme

The Gamer Xtreme has a wealth of connectivity options, with ports available at the top of the case and the motherboard I/O panel at the rear. On the top of the case, starting from the front, you’ll find the power button, reset button, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, two USB-A 3.0 ports, an RGB mode button, and an RGB color button.The rear I/O panel is home to one DisplayPort, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, four USB-A 2.0, four USB-A 5 Gbps, one USB-A 10 Gbps, 2.5 GbE, two antenna ports for the onboard Wi-Fi 6 module, and three audio jacks.

CyberPowerPC opted for an Asus B860M Max Gaming AX motherboard for the Gamer Xtreme, which uses Intel’s B860M chipset and supports Intel LGA1851 processors. In our review unit, the socket was populated with a Core Ultra 5 225F processor.

The motherboard features four DIMM slots, supporting a maximum of 256GB DDR5 memory. Our review unit featured two slots filled with 16GB Team Group T-Force Vulcan DDR5-6400 modules.

There are three M.2 slots onboard (PCIe 5.0 x4, PCIe 4.0 x4, PCIe 4.0 x2), along with four SATA 6 Gbps ports for storage. In addition, there is one PCIe 5.0 x16, one PCIe 4.0 x16 (x4 mode), and two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (x1 mode). For additional storage you can mount HDDs and SSDs to a vertical bracket behind the right-side panel (beneath the motherboard).

Gaming Performance on the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme

Our Gamer Xtreme review unit came with an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F "Arrow Lake" processor, which is a 10-core design (6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores) with a base clock of 3.3 GHz and a maximum turbo clock of 4.9 GHz. You also get 32GB of DDR5-6400 memory and an MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Shadow 2X OC (8GB) with a maximum graphics clock of 2,527 MHz.

We don't have any additional RTX 5060 prebuilts in our desktop gaming PC testing database, so we have assembled the closest matches that we could find. The CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme is equipped with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB of DDR5-6000, and an RTX 5060 Ti. The iBuyPower Y40 Pro enters the ring with a Ryzen 9 7900X, 32GB of DDR5-5200, and an RTX 5070 Ti.

I’ve been playing through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in my downtime and averaged between 120 to 145 frames per second (FPS) at 1080p using Ultra settings.

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Beginning with Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest settings), the Gamer Xtreme delivered 128 FPS at 1080p and 39 FPS at 4K. The Gamer Supreme, with its RTX 5060 Ti, was able to improve on those numbers, garnering 149 FPS and 46 FPS, respectively. Of course, the Y40 Pro came out, guns blazing, delivering 100 more FPS than the Gamer Xtreme at 1080p (228 FPS) and 89 FPS at 4K.

Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra settings) shows no mercy when it comes to graphics hardware demands, as the Gamer Xtreme could only extract 39 FPS at 1080p. Cranking the slider to 4K turned things into a slideshow, at just 2 FPS. The Gamer Supreme clocked in at 53 FPS at 1080p resolution, and 15 FPS at 4K. Not surprisingly, the Y40 Pro was the clear leader in the benchmarks, with 87 FPS and 29 FPS at 1080p resolution and 4K resolution, respectively.

Far Cry 6 (Ultra settings), is another veteran of our gaming benchmark suite, and here the Gamer Xtreme pulled 109 FPS at 1080p and a playable 50 FPS at 4K. The Gamer Supreme was about 20 percent faster in each benchmark, while the Y40 Pro doubled the Gamer Xtreme’s performance at 4K (102 FPS).

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium settings), is still one of the most beautiful PC games I’ve ever played, even six years after its release. The Gamer Xtreme is capable of 84 FPS at 1080p, which drops to 31 FPS at 4K resolution. The Y40 Pro shows the true power of the RTX 5070 Ti, nearly doubling performance at 1080p (161 FPS) and more than doubling at 4K (66 FPS).

Finally, our Borderlands 3 benchmark (Badass settings), showed the Gamer Xtreme delivering 116 FPS at 1080p and 44 FPS at 4K. For comparison, the Gamer Supreme with its RTX 5060 Ti hit 135 FPS at 1080p and 52 FPS at 4K.

The gaming performance of the Gamer Xtreme was quite good, all things considered. The Core Ultra 5 225F is no match for the Ryzen processors in CPU-intensive games or higher-spec RTX 50 Series graphics cards at 4K resolution. But when you consider the $1,099 price tag of the Gamer Xtreme versus the $1,859 price of the Gamer Supreme, the roughly 10 to 20% performance differential between the two systems becomes a lot more palatable for budget shoppers.

Metro Exodus is our go-to resource for gaming PC stress tests, and we used a 15-run loop on the Gamer Xtreme. The system averaged 89.57 FPS at 1080p, with a low of 87.96 FPS and a high of 89.98 FPS. During the test, the Core Ultra 5 225F’s performance cores averaged 4.47 GHz, the efficiency cores clocked in at 4.11 GHz, and the CPU package measured 71 degrees Celsius. The RTX 5060 averaged 2.45 GHz at an average temperature of 69 C.

Fan noise from the 120mm CPU cooler is loud, even at idle. Unlike the gentle hum that you’ll get with AIO coolers, the Gamer Xtreme’s air cooler can get a bit irritating if all you’re trying to do is browse the internet or write a document. Once you start gaming and the fans on the RTX 5060 ramp, the noise becomes even more offensive. Not all air coolers are this loud, so CyberPower’s fan choice here is a bit curious.

Productivity Performance on the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme

The Gamer Xtreme features a Core Ultra 5 225F processor (6 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores), 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. As you’ll see in the benchmarks, the Core Ultra 5 225F’s shortage of cores compared to the Ryzen systems in this test is readily apparent. However, there’s a huge delta in price between the Gamer Xtreme and the other two systems, so always keep that in the back of your mind.

The Geekbench 6 synthetic CPU benchmark saw the Gamer Xtreme come to the table with 2,893 in the single-core test and 14,873 in the multi-core test. For comparison, the Gamer Xtreme with its raucous Ryzen 7 9800X3D hit 3,335 and 18,601, respectively.

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What it lacked in CPU muscle, the Gamer Xtreme made up for it in storage performance. During our 25GB file transfer test, the MSI M470 Pro SSD sped past the radar gun at 1,964.94 Mbps, putting it well ahead of the more expensive systems in this test. The Gamer Supreme managed 1,664.11 Mbps, while the Y40 Pro was even further back at 1,501.55.

Finally, the Handbrake test really showed the real-world shortfall on multi-threaded performance. When we transcode our 4K video test file to 1080p, the Gamer Xtreme took four minutes and 27 seconds, compared to just two minutes and 58 seconds for the Gamer Supreme. The Y40 Pro was faster still, completing the task in two minutes and 29 seconds.

Keyboard and Mouse with the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme

CyberPowerPC includes a basic keyboard and mouse in the box with the Gamer Xtreme. It’s nothing that I would have purchased for my personal use, but as a pack-in with a gaming desktop, it's quite good.

The NOHI 2 keyboard has multi-colored RGB lighting effects and relatively good tactile typing. There are flip-out feet to adjust your typing angle and you can cycle through the different lighting modes using the FN key plus numbers 1 through 0. Using the keyhero.com typing test, I averaged 90 words per minute with 95.67 percent accuracy.

A CyberPowerPC Elite M2 RGB gaming mouse is included, but it’s a little on the small side for my tastes and designed for right-handed folks. The mouse has six buttons (including two on the side and a top button that by default controls DPI). There’s nothing particularly outstanding about the mouse and it works “just fine.”

Software and Warranty

I can gladly say that CyberPowerPC doesn’t include any extraneous software or utilities on the Gamer Xtreme. No system utilities, no warranty apps, no resource-robbing antivirus trials, and no trials for games or VPNs. Instead, you get a bone stock install of Windows 11 Home, which is great news for gamers who want zero bloat to contend with first booting up the system.

Systems purchased directly from CyberPowerPC.com come with a three-year labor and two-year parts warranty. Our particular system, which is available exclusively from Costco, comes with a two-year warranty.

CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme Configurations

Our Gamer Xtreme review unit (Model GXi2000CSTV3) is a Costco exclusive, and features an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Shadow 2X OC graphics card, 32GB of Team Group T-Force Vulcan DDR5-6400 (2x 16GB) RAM, a 2TB SSD, and Windows 11 Home. It’s priced at a reasonable $1,099.99.

Best Buy also sells a higher-spec version (Model GXi3400BSTV17) with a Core Ultra 7 265F, GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD for $1,599.

Bottom Line

You get quite a bit for your $1,099.99with the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme. You get 32GB of RAM and a generous 2TB SSD for installing your favorite AAA games. Although the keyboard and mouse that are included in the box aren’t the best, they’re perfectly serviceable for gamers on a budget.

You also get niceties like a roomy case with plenty of cooling and RGB vividness, standard Wi-Fi (albeit the older Wi-Fi 6 standard), and a bloat-free install of Windows 11.

At this price point, it’s hard to find fault with the Gamer Xtreme, other than the grating sound from its CPU cooler, which is loud even at idle, and only gets louder when you start gaming. If CyberPowerPC could swap out the air-cooled solution for one with a quieter fan or AIO unit and bump the price slightly, it’d have a real winner here.