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Processors are more powerful than ever, and thanks to cleverly designed Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces (UEFI – the replacement for BIOS) on the latest Intel chipset-based motherboards, they’re also easier to overclock. Despite the already immense power of recent Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 chips, there’s an arms race on among system builders to push the new processors as far as they’ll go.
CyberPower’s Liquid High 5GHz is a perfect example. It’s built with an Intel Core i7-2600K, the cheapest unlocked i7, which costs around £200. The processor has been pushed from its native speed of 3.4GHz all the way up to 5GHz. It’s no simple task, and CyberPower has used a lot of high-end liquid cooling to keep it from overheating. This is one of the most dramatic speed increases we’ve seen, although the overclock isn’t entirely stable – we had to reboot once or twice after getting an “overclock failed” message from the UEFI.
Its effectiveness, however, is borne out by its performance in our benchmark tests, where it achieved a massive overall score of 146. That’s even higher than the blistering Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire, which uses an overclocked Core i5.
Unfortunately, although it’s effective, we have our doubts about the build quality of the Liquid High’s liquid cooling system. The tubes themselves feel sturdy, but cable ties, rather than jubilee clips, are used to help secure the ends of pipes to the cooling system’s components. Meanwhile a bank of fans at the top of the case is only loosely affixed and wobbles. Everything remained dry and secure throughout our review, but we’d handle the entire system with care to prevent anything from coming loose. The case itself is sturdy, large and extremely heavy, but does little to damp the noise of the system’s six fans.
If the overclock is spectacular, it’s certainly matched by the choice of graphics card and motherboard. The 1.5GHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 is one of the most powerful graphics cards around and it blasted through our tests with frame rates of 52fps in STALKER, 84fps in Crysis and 79fps in Dirt 3. It has two DVI outputs and an HDMI port that can also send full-quality Blu-ray audio to a compatible TV or AV receiver. Meanwhile, the Asus P8Z68-V Pro motherboard uses Intel’s latest and most feature-packed Z68 chipset. The motherboard has a couple of free PCI and PCI-E x16 slots and one accessible PCI-E x1 slot.
We were slightly disappointed to find that although all four memory slots were occupied, they each contain only a 2GB module. That said, 8GB of RAM should be more than enough for everything this side of ray tracing. There’s a 1TB hard disk, but it appears to be unbranded – we were able to extract a serial number from it, but no manufacturer could be identified. There’s a very modest 30GB SSD drive, but don’t let its small size put you off – it’s configured to take advantage of the Z68 motherboard chipset’s Smart Response Technology (SRT), which allows you to use a small, fast SSD as an external read/write cache for your normal hard disk, dramatically improving access speeds.
Finally, there’s a Blu-ray re-writer drive; perfect for movie nights or huge backups. If you need any more storage, you’ll have to rely on the external variety. Fortunately, there are two eSATA ports as well as two USB3 ports – one at the front and one at the back. There are also six standard USB ports at the back and another two at the front.
Inside, all but one of the four SATA3 and four SATA2 ports is used, but three of these are already connected to empty 3.5mm drive bays to which you can slot in the disk of your choice. One connects the Blu-ray drive, one goes to the front eSATA port and the last two are taken up by the hard disks, leaving one port free.
The system is rounded out by a 24in widescreen BenQ G2420HDBL display, which has natural colours, even backlighting and a matt finish, which cuts out reflections. Finally, there’s a Logitech MK320 wireless keyboard and mouse set. The mouse is rather small, so gamers will want to replace it sooner rather than later, but the keyboard has pleasingly springy and responsive, if slightly rattly, keys.
The Liquid High 5GHz is a bit of a mixed bag, and an expensive one at that. Its core components – processor, motherboard and graphics card – are of outstanding quality and explain a lot of the PC’s cost. The case is massive to the point of being inconvenient and the system is noisy. The system’s performance is outstanding, but at just a pound under £1,500, we’d be disappointed if it weren’t. Unfortunately, it’s let down by the dubious job that’s been made of securing the liquid cooling system and occasional non-fatal overclock failures at boot time. Wired2Fire’s Hellspawn XFire is almost as powerful and £500 cheaper.
