Pricing
Cyberpower has set a price of £999.00 for this particular system which comes with a 3 year warranty and superb customer service hotline. The custom PC market is very competitive around the £1000 mark and consumers can choose from a huge array of configurations. As always, we determine the value proposition of each system by conducting a detailed component rundown:
When totaled up this equates to £1006.54, a saving of £7.54 compared to a self-build. Please remember to take into account that the chassis is exclusive to Cyberpower and its retail price is unknown. As a result, I took an average between £50-£100 which is most probably the chassis’ pricing bracket. Additionally, the cost of Skylake CPUs are currently ridiculously high due to supply shortages. Whatever the case, Cyberpower is offering the system cheaper than it would cost to make yourself and with a 3-year peace of mind guarantee to boot!
Overview
The Zeus Mini EVO I-970’s chassis is sophisticated and a real eye-opener. Additionally, it’s not just style over substance and manages to incorporate an impressive front I/O. Personally, I love the unusual design and matte finish which is easy to clean and doesn’t attract too many fingerprints. From a visual standpoint, the entire build opts for a black and white colour scheme which isn’t too common and looks excellent without being overly distracting. If you’re after a PC which is compact enough for traveling purposes but doesn’t compromise on features, then the Zeus Mini EVO I-970 is certainly worth a look.
In terms of performance, the i5-6600K is an excellent CPU which manages to get relatively close to the higher-end i7-6700K. The majority of games on the market struggle to properly utilize hyperthreading which makes the i5-6600K a good option for the budget-conscience customer. Clearly, there are exceptions like Crysis 3, but this shouldn’t be a major a concern unless you want to start considering higher-end graphics card solutions like the GTX 980 or 980 Ti.
During our gaming tests, the system consistently attained around the 60 frames-per-second mark at 2560×1440 and 1920×1080 results were well beyond 80 frames-per-second. This was achieved on extremely high graphical presets and it’s always amazing to see how capable the GTX 970 is. As a result, the gaming experience up to 1440P resolutions is extraordinary and able to provide fluid gameplay. On another note, I strongly believe the GTX 970 is the best mainstream GPU around since the 8800GT and a fantastic choice for this build.
One small addition which needs mentioning is the presence of multiple BIOS profiles. Cyberpower saved an overclocked profile to help the customer easily recover from a fault and instantly access the 4.2GHz frequency. This is a clever move as many people feel intimidated by the overclocking process and worried about damaging their investment. In regards to temperatures, the CPU rarely surpassed 60 degrees under heavy load and has additional headroom for a small frequency boost. Although, Cyberpower’s sensible clock speed perfectly balances the need for performance with cool running temperatures. In a similar vein, the GTX 970 didn’t encounter any heat issues and ran well within its technical limits. I’m absolutely blown away by the thermal results given the chassis’ ITX form factor.
On another note. the system is laughably quiet to the point where it’s almost ridiculous. The idle results were good but under load the PC remained completely silent. I couldn’t hear any fan RPM changes, pump noise or coil whine which many GTX 970s have been plagued by.
The storage results paint a very confusing picture and I’m still a little perplexed about what transpired. The boot drive SSD’s read speeds were fantastic, but I couldn’t even attain 180MB/s during write tests. Obviously, the V300 isn’t a premium drive and is designed for cheaper builds, but it should be reaching around 230MB/s. Ironically, the mechanical hard disk managed better write speeds which shouldn’t be the case.
Finally, Cyberpower did an excellent job with the system’s cable management and employed a logical arrangement to keep things tidy. The use of zip-ties and modular cabling makes for a lovely finish and it can be quite difficult to route a huge array of cables in such a thin chassis. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter any trailing cables and didn’t feel like any aspect of the cabling would come apart. The one slight area of improvement could be around the GPU, but I’m being incredibly unfair to criticize that aspect. Overall, the cabling is impressive because the acrylic side window only shows the graphics card and not the entire build. Therefore, Cyberpower could have adopted a less professional approach. I’m glad to see they didn’t and completed the build in a stellar way.
Pros
Cons
“Cyberpower have engineered a fantastic and affordable gaming PC in a stylish form factor which oozes quality while being virtually silent. It’s cheaper than building it yourself and you’ve got that superb 3-Year warranty giving you peace of mind, making the Zeus Mini EVO excellent value for money.
Cyberpower Zeus Mini EVO I-970 Gaming PC Review
Thank you Cyberpower for providing us with this sample.
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