Systems

Cyberpower Ultra Fusion Review

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January 8, 2014 8 Min Read
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A computer system from Cyberpower named Ultra Fusion featuring AMD FX-9590, GIGABYTE 990FX UD3, PowerColor AMD R9 290X and much more!


Product on Review: Ultra Fusion
Manufacturer & Sponsor: Cyberpower
Price: £1499 GBP

In the world of computing not everyone has the expertise to building their own custom PC. To many it can appear a daunting task to undertake and not least of all because there is a requirement to choose compatible hardware. Although many computer etailers allow for the purchase of individual components the bigger companies out there have put considerable time into designing and building their own systems for consumers to purchase. So if you don’t have the know-how, you can still get on the road to gaming stardom (or whatever else) without having to build the system yourself.

Today we are to look at our first computer system from Cyberpower. Ultra Fusion features AMD FX-9590, AMD R9 290X and a plethora of other exciting hardware – join us as we put this new system under the spotlight!



About Cyberpower
Originally founded in the United States, Cyberpower Inc is one of the leading brands in the competitive US computer market. With vast global backing from leading technology brands such as Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Asus and Microsoft etc, we aim to deliver the most up to date hardware for your needs at wholesale prices, and bring the well renowned name of Cyberpower Inc to the UK. With vision, commitment and determination we can manufacture a vast range of custom built PC systems to suit the needs of any individual or company. Our PC systems are built with up-most care and attention as we strive towards making this not just our profession, but our obsession.

Technical Specifications


Case
Cooler Master COSMOS SE
Processor
AMD FX-9590 X8
Motherboard
GIGABYTE 990FX UD3
CPU Cooler
CM Seidon 120M (With Dual Akasa 120 LED fans)
Memory
Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
Optical Drive
15X Blu Ray Writer
Storage
– Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA III HDD
– Crucial 120GB M500 SSD
Graphics Cards
PowerColor AMD R9 290X 4GB
Power Supply Unit
Corsair RM850 Modular
Operating System
Windows 8.1 64Bit

Exterior


Cyberpower’s Ultra Fusion is housed inside Cooler Master’s newest COSMOS chassis, the SE. This is a full tower and is built with quality in mind. It measures 263.8 x 569.4 x 524.4 mm and features a Perspex window to allow users to view the system inside.

We have actually had first-hand experience with this case when Cooler Master sent over an engineering sample and we can vouch for it being a solid offering.


Cooler Master’s COSMOS SE houses all the hardware


At the front of the case there are a total of four USB ports, 2x USB 2.0 and 2x USB 3.0 as well as accompanying headphone and microphone jacks for audio. Cyberpower has given the Ultra Fusion a 15X Blu Ray Writer which sits at the top of the case and can also serve DVD and CD functionality.


USB 3.0 ports at the front


Around the back of the system there are a plethora of ports to take advantage of, with even more USB 3.0 functionality.

The rear IO panel of the GIGABYTE 990FX UD3 motherboard provides the following:

1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
1 x IEEE 1394a port
2 x eSATA 6Gb/s connectors
8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
1 x RJ-45 port
6 x audio jacks

The AMD R9 290X graphics card has a number of ports too which include dual DVI, HDMI and display port. It’s nice to see variation and flexibility here.


A plethora of ports at the back of the system

Interior


Lifting the side panels away from COSMOS SE we can reveal how neat and tidy Cyberpower have built the system inside and we can confidently approve of their efforts here. Both the front and back side of the case feature good cable management practise, with everything tucked away neatly.

Incidentally, Cyberpower supply the original motherboard box along with the system. Inside the box are the instructions manuals and all additional cables for the modular power supply – should you choose to attach additional devices.


An attractive looking system



Behind the motherboard tray


Cyberpower has picked a number of reputable brands to form the basis for Ultra Fusion. At the heart of this system is AMD FX-9590 which is an 8-core processor operating at 4.7GHz and consisting of 8MB L3 Cache. Cooling this processor is the Cooler Master Seidon 120M which is a closed loop, liquid cooler. Cyberpower has attached two Akasa LED fans onto the radiator of this cooler which emit a blue glow when powered up.

In terms of memory, Cyberpower has given our system Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 which is generally regarded as customary nowadays for mid-range configurations.

All of these components are accommodated by GIGABYTE’s GA-990FXA-UD3 which is a feature-packed offering, giving plenty of features which come in extremely useful and of course, GIGABYTE are a reliable brand when we’re talking motherboards.


The core components inside Ultra Fusion


Forming the basis for 3D processing is the 4GB PowerColor R9 290X which is AMD’s latest high-end graphics card. As we outlined in our launch review of AMD R9 290X, this card is very capable and will play the latest gaming titles at high frame rates.

All of this hardware is sustained by Corsair’s RM850 modular power supply unit. This PSU is modular and can therefore have its cables detached – allowing for a clean and tidy interior. The RM850 is well-known for its reliability and low-noise, so this is a good choice as far as we’re concerned – if not slightly overkill for the specification, but it does allow for upgrade headroom.


Graphics power via AMD R9 290X


Cyberpower provide two units for storage – the primary drive is a Crucial 120GB M500 SSD offering SATA 3 (6GB/s) performance and then the secondary drive is a Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD. The Seagate offering will be the go-to for games storage and the bulk of applications since 120GB with Windows 8.1 installed leaves very little surplus.


SSD and HDD storage

General Benchmarks – Windows 8 Bootup & Power Consumption

For the general benchmarks we use a digital stopwatch to monitor the time taken for Windows 8 to bootup and an energy monitor plug to display the overall wattage given while the system is fully loaded with Unigine Heaven 4.0

2D Benchmarks – Cinebench 11.5 & x264 HD 4.0

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor is.


Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. We think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently

3D Benchmarks – Unigine Heaven 4.0 & 3DMark

Unigine’s benchmark is to showcase the benefits of DX 11 and the use of tessellation as opposed to normal rendering techniques. The demo has impressive visuals that give an insight into what we can expect from gaming in the future.


Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today’s high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Gaming Benchmarks – Tomb Raider, BF4, Crysis 3, DIRT Showdown

Throughout the gaming benchmarks we use cutting-edge gaming titles which are renowned for both popularity and complex rendering styles. This helps to establish how well the system can handle 3D processing.

Conclusion


This is our first outing with Cyberpower but we can confirm it’s certainly been a positive experience. While many will argue the toss over basing a system around AMD’s FX platform over Intel’s Haswell this particular subject will always be debatable. There are still some benefits to using AMD over Intel.

At the heart of Ultra Fusion is the AMD FX-9590 – an 8-core processor which operates at 4.7GHz. In our 2D benchmarks this chip demonstrated good performance for encoding and processing usage. Cyberpower has picked reputable brands for their selection of core components which includes GIGABYTE for the motherboard, Kingston for the DDR3, PowerColor for the graphics card. Speaking of which, the PowerColor R9 290X revealed strong performance in a range of popular gaming titles. We are left in no doubt that the system as a whole can deliver brilliant gaming performance.



Our particular sample came with Windows 8.1 pre-installed – if you prefer Windows 7 this can be selected when configuring the Ultra Fusion, you aren’t stuck with any set configuration. In fact, components can be swapped out if you want to select other hardware. As a standard rule of thumb, our system comes with 3 Year Labour, 2 Year Parts, 1 Month Collect and Return plus Life-Time Technical Support which is rather impressive and certainly gives you that peace of mind.

Priced at £1499 GBP the Ultra Fusion under this particular configuration is a worthwhile investment. In our testing it revealed a capable offering for both 2D and 3D usage and as we mentioned above, the warranty and support add extra value.

Ultra Fusion is a proficient computer system which features a plethora of great hardware from reputable brands. If you’re seeking a burly, capable computer system which can handle the latest gaming titles then Ultra Fusion is worth your consideration.

Pros
+ Appealing to the eye
+ Reliable brands used throughout
+ System presented in a tidy manor
+ Provides great performance

Cons
– Noisy under load
– Heavy




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