Cyberpower PC Infinity X115 GT Review

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅09-09-21
Value

Intel Core i5-11400:- £169.99
MSI B560M-A PRO:- £89.99
16GB Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black 3200MHz:- £59.99
Cooler Master MWE 650 Gold:- £79.99
1TB Intel 670p NVMe SSD:- £137.81 *
Cooler Master MasterBox MB311L:- N/A **
MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 3X 12G OC:- £629.99
Wireless Wi-Fi 802.11ac Dual Band (2.4 GHz & 5GHz) PCI-E Adapter & Dual Antennas:- £21.49

Microsoft Windows 10 Home:- £92.42

Total:- £1281.67 inc. V.A.T.


Okay, so there’s quite a lot to unpack here beyond the final total, but at first glance the Infinity X115 GT appears to be excellent value for money. Cyberpower PC priced the system approximately as configured at £1183.20 inc. V.A.T., almost £100 less than that of the individual components at retail even without including the MasterBox MB311L (which is unavailable to consumers through retail channels in the UK). Taking the nearest analog of the latter, the almost identical MB320L, you would add another £55 to the total and mark the system at a saving of over £150. There’s more to this however.

The 1TB Intel 670p is also generally unavailable at UK retail, with only one Amazon.co.uk reseller listed. Similarly specced QLC NAND drives are significantly cheaper, including the Samsung 1TB 980 (£113.99) and WD Black SN750 (£115.99). Realistically, we can probably shave £25 off the SSD selection.

By far the most problematic aspect of the system is however the graphics card. MSI’s RTX 3060 Ventus 3X is a tough one to acquire and commands a premium, but you can’t actually spec the card out in the X115 GT’s Configurator. Instead it seems like pot luck which one GeForce RTX 3060; although you hope it’s a good one, Cyberpower PC don’t seem to guarantee that unless you explicitly choose the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio 12GB for an extra £110. Every other card option however (i.e. RTX 3060 Ti, 3070 etc.) is a specific model and SKU however.

We understand that the throughput of this popular card and sometimes inconsistent supply make guaranteeing a model difficult, but with so much variability in the street price (as low as £469.99 for an entry-level ASUS RTX 3060 at one UK retailer, from a supposed MSRP of £299.99) it would be awful to be stuck with a poorer design simply because the ordering system wasn’t transparent enough.

Nonetheless, assuming a more modest SSD (£115) and RTX 3060 variant (£570), you still come in considerably above £1183.20. And that’s before you factor in Cyberpower PC’s assembly, testing, shipping and warranty costs, not to mention a third Cooler Master ARGB fan thrown in for good measure. Certainly sounds like good value to us if the process of putting together your PC fills you with dread rather than glee.

As far as obvious upgrades go, one or two immediately jump out. Moving from the stock Intel cooler to even the most basic aftermarket model (air or water) would likely make for a more pleasant day-to-day noise level. The B560M PRO VDH for £5 more brings with it USB 3.1 ports and better cooling for more long-term reliability. And if you really wanted to stretch things significantly there’s also the option of the NVIDIA Founder’s Edition RTX 3060 Ti for £92+V.A.T. more, guaranteeing a better performing card even if the price is considerably higher than the almost mythical MSRP of £369.

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There’s one more aspect of the configuration process we’d like to bring up here. The reviewed system is the Infinity X115 GT, but there exists a non-GT version more prominently advertised on Cyberpower’s website. It has a different default configuration (which we don’t take issue with) but there is one glaring difference between the two: the price for upgrading from an i5-11400 to an i5-11600K.

For the Infinity X115 the price is £75, roughly in line with the difference in MSRP between the two chips; the X115 GT configurator however demands an eye-watering £167, £92 more than its sibling system. There's no clear reason for this difference and would mean that the potential customer is being stung by a huge mark-up should they make the unwise decision to improve the processor of their X115 GT.

The vagaries of wholesale purchasing being what they are, it’s possible that the X115 GT is taking advantage of preferential subsidies available with the i5-11400 when bundled in a particular hardware configuration. But if that’s the case then removing the CPU upgrade option and gently referring customers to the X115 configurator instead might have been a more consumer-friendly approach.


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