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Since it’s almost impossible to get your hands on sought-after computer components, your best bet may be to buy from a PC builder and get yourself a prebuilt system. Today we’re checking out Cyberpower’s Ultra 9 XT system boasting a Ryzen 9 5900X, Radeon RX 6800XT, 32GB 3600MHz RAM and more. Coming in at £2795, including a 5-year warranty, is it worth your hard earned cash?
Specifications:
- Corsair 4000D OEM case
- 6x 120mm Cyberpower Black PWM Fans
- Asus TUF B550 Plus motherboard
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 12-core 3.70GHz with 4.8GH turbo
- MSI Gaming X-Trio 16GB AMD RX 6800XT
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4x8GB) 3600MHz RAM
- Corsair RM850X 850W 80+ Gold Modular PSUEdit crop formats
- Master Lite 360 cooler
- 500GB Seagate Firecuda 520 PCIe Gen4 NVME
- 4TB Seagate HDD
- Shipping is free within the UK and comes with 5 year limited warranty
On paper this machine is offering some impressive specifications, component pairings are excellent here for a high-end gaming system as well as home workstation for video editing as an example. Of course, we’ll be putting the system through its paces later on in our testing to see how it holds up in both synthetic tests and also real-world usage.
The first thing I want to touch on is how the system arrived. I was surprised when it came only in the case box, I usually find prebuilt systems arrive within the case box and then placed inside another larger shipping box with plenty of padding… but that wasn’t the case here. The other thing to note was finding the power cable wrapped inside a plastic bag placed inside the system. Yes, this cable was placed inside the system above the graphics card before the support foam is inserted.
Personally, I’d be worried about receiving the system like this in fear of any damages via transit. I aired my concerns but Cyberpower assured me they’re confident enough that nothing will go wrong and as such they do offer 5 years limited warranty. Would you be happy to receive a £2795 system like this?
Despite the huge tinted glass panel on the Corsair 4000D case we actually have a pretty stealthy system here thanks to the 6 black fans, with the only RGB being on the side of the MSI 6800 XT graphics card and on the Cooler Master Lite cooler. As the glass panel is tinted you can’t really see inside, Leo reviewed the Corsair 4000D last year and this was one of his cons but I’d say for a stealthy system like this it’s actually a positive.
Cable management throughout is superb and behind the back panel everything is routed meticulously. I’m impressed with the attention to detail and cable routing here and if I was a paying customer, I’d be filled with confidence at the care taken when building this system.
Where possible I’ve compared our results against the PCSpecialist Gladius i7 system that Luke reviewed last year. At the time of his review the system cost £2000 and the specs are:
- Intel Core i7-10700K, an 8-core CPU with base clocks of 3.8GHz and boost of 5.1GHz
- 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM
- 10GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus PCIe NVMe SSD
- Corsair RM750x PSU
Of course, our system has slightly more grunt with our 12-core Ryzen 9 CPU vs the 8-core i7, and we not only have faster RAM but we also have double the capacity at 32GB 3600MHz vs 16GB 3200MHz.
Synthetic GPU tests against the PCSpecialist system with 3DMark Fire Strike show the 6800XT and 5900X take a strong lead, but the 3DMark Time Spy results are much closer, with the scores almost neck and neck.
As for real world gaming examples I tested at all of the above games at both 1080p and 1440p with the highest presets available and with V-sync turned off. As you can see from the results this system absolutely flies through all these games at both resolutions, even hitting 333 FPS in two of our games at 1080p! Our AMD RX 6800 XT graphics card can definitely handle itself throughout a variety of games and would be a great pairing for a high refresh-rate 1440p monitor.
Here we see Cinebench R15 results for both multicore and single core tests along with the results after one run compared to four runs, and as you can see there’s hardly any change at all after multiple runs, which is excellent!
Cinebench R20 results are compared with the PCSpecialist system and as you can see the Cyberpower’s 5900X really wiped the floor with the i7-10700K’s multicore results, though we would expect this given its increase core count. Even the single-core performance pulls into a steady lead though.
Time taken to render our BMW CPU test within Blender 2.93 was 120 seconds, which is very quick and what we’d want to see from our 12-core 5900X. PC Mark 10 shows how well the system performs at a variety of tasks, with a particularly excellent result in the digital content creation benchmark.
Looking at our memory benchmarks also shows our system take a strong win against the PCSpecialist system, but again we have double the RAM that also runs at higher frequencies.
CrystalDiskMark results are what we were expected, but they are also slightly disappointing… and here's what we mean. The 500GB Seagate Firecuda 520 drive is rated for 2500MB/s writes but the 1TB and 2TB models are rated for 4400MB/s writes. Our drive is rated at a 5,000MB/s read, which we pretty much achieve here and while we scored 2,527MB/s write, which is just above the official rated speed, we still feel it’s a bit on the slow side for 2021 standards. There are drives available now, using Phison's latest E18 controller, that can deliver in excess of 6000 MB/s writes, so we’d have loved to see something faster here.
Noise wise both systems are pretty much the same however our Cyberpower system is slightly louder by 5dB under load. Finally, power consumption shows our system demands more power than the PCSpecialist system but not by a drastic amount.
CPU temps in comparison to the PCSpecialist system are ever so slightly higher at idle and gaming but under high load our 5900X actually stays slightly cooler than the i7-10700k. GPU wise, the 6800 XT has a higher idle temp but stays a fair amount cooler than the 3080 while gaming, hitting 64C.
Given the current climate around PC components and the general lack of availability, I asked Cyberpower how long lead times are from the point of order and whether or not you could expect delays because of the current shortages. They estimate up to 10 working days though many orders are shipped early.
As for shortages they’re currently well stocked and all orders are on schedule. You can only expect delays if you change the configuration to a part that states “pre-order”. They also stated that getting more GPU and CPU stock is slowly becoming easier too. That’s good news, if you order a system right now you can expect it to be with you within 10 days or less provided one of your components isn't out of stock.
The not so good news is pricing, originally when I started writing this review this system cost £2599, however; the price has now increased to £2795, so almost £200 more. I questioned Cyberpower about this price change and they informed me that literally overnight the pricing of graphics cards and other components increased by an uncomfortable amount and of course as such they have had to increase their prices. This increase in cost will apply to all system builders and isn’t something Cyberpower themselves could control but I did want to mention it.
Overall, the Cyberpower Ultra 9 XT system is a powerhouse for gaming and moderate productivity use. The pairings of the AMD RX 6800 XT 16GB GPU, 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X CPU and 32GB 3600MHz RAM deliver excellent results in our tests, especially when compared to the results of the PCSpecialist Gladius i7 system's RTX 3080 and Intel Core i7-10700K, beating it in all areas within our Cinebench CPU tests and 3DMark synthetic GPU tests. The Cyberpower Ultra 9 XT is definitely no slouch for high refresh rate gaming within the latest and most demanding of games.
All components pair nicely within this system, however; the only thing that is letting the system down as a whole is the Seagate Firecuda 520 NVMe SSD with its slow write speeds for 2021 standards. With some drives reaching excess of 6,000MB/s now, the 2500MB/s write of the Firecuda 520 is slightly disappointing. Luckily it still has competent read speeds and as such still makes this a great gaming system with the proof being shown within our real world gaming tests. Other than that component letting the system down, everything else is well thought out.
Another nice touch is the stealthy nature of our system with its tinted glass panel Corsair 4000D case, some people are not RGB lovers and the case choice here paired with the six black Cyberpower 120mm PWM fans is very subtle, this is ideal for those looking for an understated, powerful, gaming rig without blinding RGB LEDs lighting their gaming space.
On top of that, it's also been well assembled with a good quality of cable management and component placement within the case. Both front and back have been well managed with plenty of cable tidies, and the fact Cyberpower got this system to us in a very short amount of time shows they've taken considerable care when building this system.
There's also not any large dead spaces within the case and despite the radiator of the Cooler Master Lite 360 being placed at the front, with the pipes at the top, our pump is still lower than the top of the radiator, which ensures the pump remains wet and will perform properly. This also provides plenty of room to work on the motherboard if needed and provides better cooling for the motherboard's VRM heatsinks. The only negative here is this may cause some noise as air will be situated at the top of the radiator.
My experience with the system overall has definitely been positive but of course, as mentioned, my main issue is with how the system arrived to me, the lack of packaging and the power cable being found inside. It’s not something I’d be overly happy with myself as a paying customer and if they improved this then I’d highly recommend this system. Of course, you do get that 5-year limited warranty for peace of mind but I’d rather the reassurance of better packaging on arrival.
You can purchase the Cyberpower Ultra 9 XT system with the same spec’s as our review sample and/or make additional changes via their configurator, HERE!
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros:
- Good pairing of components
- Excellent performance across the board
- All components hold the all-black theme together
- Great cable management
- Case fits the components well – no excess space
Cons:
- 1TB SSD would mean users are benefiting from faster write speeds
- Not very well packaged, arrives in case box only
- Power cable ships inside the system itself
KitGuru says: If you’re struggling to find parts to build a new system or you’re just in the market to buy a high-end prebuilt gaming PC then we do recommend checking out Cyberpower’s Ultra 9 XT system as it performed excellently throughout our tests and time with it. The packaging of the system isn’t ideal but the 5 year limited warranty should ease any concerns.
