Cyberpower Infinity X99 RTX Elite review: To infinity and beyond

If I had £1,599 to spend on a gaming PC right now, this is the exact specification I’d choose. Intel’s eight-core, overclockable i7-9700K processor goes perfectly with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 graphics, and 16GB of fast RAM ensures everything runs without a hiccup. It proved a winning formula for PC Specialist a few months back, with its Vortex Adonis earning an Expert Reviews Best Buy. And now, Cyberpower UK – the British arm of a US company that’s been building PCs since 1998 – has used the same recipe to create a PC that tackles the Adonis head on.

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Cyberpower Infinity X99 RTX Elite review: Performance

Since the core specification is the same, performance is, as you’d expect, very similar. The Cyberpower scored 281 in our benchmarks compared to 271 by the PC Specialist – a win, but by a margin of only 3%. That’s not a performance gap you’re going to notice in practice.

It was a similar story in our gaming benchmarks. The Cyberpower was a fraction faster than the PC Specialist in Rise of Tomb Raider at both 1440p and 4K, averaging 89.6fps and 47.4fps respectively, compared to the Adonis’ 88.2fps and 46.5fps. In Metro: Last Light at 1440p the X99 RTX Elite managed 107fps versus the 104fps of the Vortex Adonis, and when we upped the resolution to 4K, the Cyberpower maintained its small lead, at 53.6fps vs 51.5fps.

In short, both systems will be excellent performers if you’re looking for a 1440p gaming system. It may even be that, with newer drivers, the Adonis could narrow the (already barely noticeable) gap. However, if you want smooth 4K gaming then, as ever, my advice is to upgrade to an Nvidia RTX 2080 card.

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Cyberpower Infinity X99 RTX Elite review: Storage

One area where the X99 RTX Elite trails behind the Adonis is system storage: its SATA-based SSD is much slower than the older system’s M.2 NVMe SSD, which means that everyday operations won’t feel as snappy. To quantify the difference we turned to the AS SSD benchmark: while the Vortex Adonis’ SSD hit speeds of 2,684MB/sec for sequential writing, the Cyberpower only managed 448MB/sec. The gap was even bigger for reading, with respective scores of 1,546MB/sec to 134MB/sec.

One thing you don’t have to worry about is running out of room. Both systems include 2TB hard disks for data storage, and the Cyberpower gives you two easy routes to adding more drives – one of which is to fill the M.2 slot that’s left tantalisingly empty on the motherboard.

The second involves unscrewing the right-hand side of the case to access the boxed-in area below the motherboard. This is normally closed off from view – and for good reason, because it houses a jumble of cables that contrasts starkly with the clean innards you see to the right. Still, all the cables are high-quality braided affairs, and among them you’ll find two full-sized drive bays, with the 2TB hard disk filling one and the other left free, plus a caddy for a second 2.5in SATA SSD.

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Cyberpower Infinity X99 RTX Elite review: Features

The graphics card and motherboard are both made by MSI. As the name suggests, the Z370-A Pro isn’t a specialist gaming board, but it does have one showy flourish – a jagged lighting strip on the left side. Cyberpower also includes two programmable strips of RGB LEDs. With all these dark-coloured components, though, I’d lean towards a tasteful white illumination rather than anything too colourful.

The board also only supports dual CrossFire graphics cards – but there’s plenty of room for other expansions, via one empty full-length PCIe slot and four x1 slots. It’s well set up for overclocking too, with a Cooler Master Seidon watercooling unit. Cyberpower claims you could achieve a speed boost of up to 30%, but of course that depends on how lucky you are with the CPU you happen to get. Overlockers will also appreciate that the RAM comes in the form of Corsair 3,000MHz LPX modules.

It’s worth mentioning that the NZXT H500 case used by Cyberpower is quite a bit smaller than the Cooler Master H500M of the Adonis, and arguably more stylish: this system will happily slot into a home office, while the Vortex Adonis is better suited to a den. However, twin 120mm case fans make the X99 RTX Elite a noisier system. Warranty terms are similar, but Cyberpower offers six months of collect-and-return cover at its own expense, while PC Specialist only gives you a single month.

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Cyberpower Infinity X99 RTX Elite review: Verdict

In the end, the Adonis remains the champion thanks to its M.2 SSD and quieter running. Even so, the Cyberpower Infinity X99 is also a superb PC, and ever so slightly faster too, making it a very strong alternative.

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