The Cyberpower Zeus Thunder 3000SE ($2,299 direct) is a great performance desktop PC in a flashy case. It saves a little money by using an off-the-shelf tower chassis, but the care taken in assembling this custom gaming PC shows in its top performance marks. This is the sub $2,500 custom gaming rig you will want to buy after cutting your teeth on a lower priced entry-level model. It has the power to fill a 1080p HD screen, even at the highest quality settings. The Cyberpower Zeus Thunder 3000SE snags our Editors' Choice for mid-level gaming machines. Welcome to the grid, program!
Design and Features
The 3000SE is built into a tall white NZXT Switch 810 chassis, which is roomy and somewhat flashy. There's tons of room in the chassis for upgrades, though the motherboard's PCI/PCIe slots are mostly occupied thanks to the twin AMD Radeon HD 7950 (Best Deal: $479.99 at TigerDirect.com) graphics cards. The system has space and accessibility to one PCIe x1 slot and one PCIe x16 graphics card slot. The PCIe x16 graphics card slot works in x8 mode, so it will support a graphics card for multi-monitor support, but the third card won't help the CrossFire configuration for too much extra 3D power. The system comes with a 120GB SSD as the boot drive, and a 2TB 7,200rpm drive as the data drive. It's got space for additional hard drives and optical drives, though there are only two extra SATA ports on the motherboard. You could theoretically add three more drives in total thanks to a pre-installed externally-accessible hard drive sled under the optical drive bays. The sled connects with a pre-wired SATA connector for a 3.5" hard drive and is basically a handy slide-in/out tray. There are four DIMM slots for more system memory and an 850W power supply unit to power it all. The interior wiring is well routed and neat, which is conducive to proper cooling airflow (and it looks nice, too). The exterior of the 3000SE's chassis is comprised of mostly white plastic panels, including a side window to show off the graphics cards, and vented panels including the top, front, and back. The top panel has a sliding louver design so the user can open the vents for more cooling. While this mimics the effect of the vented top panel on the Alienware Aurora ALX (Core i7) ($4,249 direct, 3.5 stars), the overall effect is less impressive when you have to open the vents manually and feel the flimsy plastic on the 3000SE. The system's five cooling fans plus the three in the graphics cards and power supply keep the system quite cool, but the system pumps out quite a bit of white noise as a result. It's something you'll get used to, but it's still omnipresent while the system is operating. Another feature cribbed from systems like the Alienware is the lighting above the I/O ports in the back. The lights help users connecting USB or monitor cables in the dark recesses under a dorm desk.
The system is very well equipped for external peripherals. Between the connectors on the motherboard in the back, the ones on the graphics cards, and the ones in the front of the PC, there are Eight USB 2.0 ports, Six USB 3.0 ports, one PS/2 port, one FireWire 400 port, a SPDIF port, two eSATA ports (one powered), Ethernet, audio, two DVI ports, two HMDI ports, and four daisy-chainable mini-DisplayPorts. You can hook up at least six monitors to this system and use AMD's Eyefinity to surround yourself with 3D video for games.
The 3000SE is a peach playing 3D games. The system comes game-ready right out of the box, since the system comes devoid of extra preinstalled software. The only things that are pre-installed aside from Windows 7 are the drivers for the motherboard and the graphics cards. The included copy of Office 2011 Starter isn't installed yet, so you can opt to never install it. This is great, since gamers don't want to deal with uninstalling the sorts of trialware that comes with retail systems. A lack of bloatware is one of the big reasons to buy from a custom builder. The system comes with a one year parts and three year labor warranty. This means that you can send the system back for tune-ups for free, but if a part goes bad, you'd better hope it goes off in the first year of ownership. Like most custom builders, Cyberpower's sales reps will help make sure you get the components you need, and their tech support folk are less likely to be support drones working from a set script.
Performance
Performance is the reason you buy a custom gaming rig over a retail box from a big box store. The 3000SE has performance covered. It can complete our multimedia tests with flying colors, thanks to the overclocked Core i7 processor and 16GB of memory (0:55 for Handbrake, 2:21 for Photoshop CS5). This is almost identical performance to the current midrange gaming rig Editors' Choice, the Digital Storm ODE Level 3 ($2,399 direct, 4 stars) (0:56 Handbrake, 2:21 CS5). Both are a smidge quicker than the AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC ($3,100 direct, 4 stars) (0:58 Handbrake, 2:31 CS5). The Cyberpower trades top marks with its competitors on the 3D tests. The AMD Radeon HD 7950 cards are better at the more strenuous tests at Very High, High, and Extreme quality settings. The AVADirect and Digital Storm are faster at the less strenuous middle and medium settings on the games. In any case all three produce playable frame rates at Crysis medium quality and Lost Planet 2 at both quality settings. The AVADirect falls a bit behind on Crysis at Very High quality, but both the Digital Storm and Cyberpower produce smooth frame rates. The AVADirect falls a smidge because it only uses one graphics card to the competition's two.
Essentially, should you get the Cyberpower Zeus Thunder 3000SE? Yes, if you can get past the cheapish plastic on some of the chassis' panels. Yes the system has plenty of gaming oomph to make up for it, but only if you refrain from laying hands on the system too often. The Cyberpower has better overall performance than the now former EC-winning Digital Storm ODE Level 3, the iBuypower Chimera 4-V1 ($2,499 direct, 4 stars), and the AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC. The main thing the Digital Storm has over the Cyberpower is the quality of its Corsair Graphite Series 600T chassis, which earned its own Editor's Choice award last year. In any case, if you have a budget of around $2,500 for you midrange hardcore gaming PC, the PC to buy right now is our new Editors' Choice, the Cyberpower Zeus Thunder 3000SE.
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