CyberPower Ultra Triton GTO review

The CyberPower Ultra Triton GTO takes one of the standard approaches to a low-cost PC, using a 3.8GHz AMD Trinity A10-500K processor and an FM2 motherboard to create a system that works for both desktop applications and gaming without any additional expansion cards.

The processor isn’t as fast as our favourite Intel Core i5 chips and it lags a little behind most Core i3 processors, but with an overall score of 64 in our application benchmarks, this is certainly a capable desktop system that’ll easily handle the demands placed upon your average family PC.

The on-chip AMD Radeon HD 6670 graphics is up to gaming, although you’ll have to drop the quality settings or resolution on most modern titles to see decent frame rates. We got a smooth 48fps running Dirt Showdown at high quality at a resolution of 1,280×720, but we didn’t get playable frame rates at 1,920x,1080 until we dropped the quality to medium, producing a highly playable average frame rate of 38.7fps.

If you want to add more GPU power later with a dedicated graphics card, there’s scope to do so, as the Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 motherboard has a PCI-E x16 expansion slot. You can either add a high-power standalone card or opt for an inexpensive card and use it in conjunction with the onboard graphics in CrossfireX.

There’s also a PCI slot and a PCI-E x1 slot for other expansion cards, such as TV tuners and sound cards. Bear in mind that fitting a graphics card in the x16 slot will generally block the x1 slot. Both of the board’s memory slots are occupied by 2,133MHz Kingston HyperX memory modules of 4GB each.

There’s plenty of room in the case for long graphics cards and extra drives, with six free 3.5in drive bays, including two front-facing ones suitable for a memory card reader or hot-swappable drive caddy, and three unused 5.25in bays. The occupied bays contain a 1TB hard disk and a DVD-RW drive respectively. This leaves you two SATA2 ports, but it’s disappointing that there’s no SATA3 support, as you won’t be able to get the maximum speed out of an SSD if you fit one at a later date.

The case is well finished but doesn’t provide much sound or dust proofing and doesn’t have replaceable blanking plates at the back – once removed, they’re gone. The generic PSU of is surprisingly noisy and is probably the first thing we’d change.

The front panel provides you with two USB ports as well as 3.5mm mic and headphone ports. There are only another four USB ports on the back and the motherboard lacks USB3 support. The back panel has VGA, DVI and HDMI graphics outputs, a PS/2 keyboard or mouse port, Gigabit Ethernet and three 3.5mm audio outputs, but that’s it.

The system comes with a 21.5in AOC e2250Swda monitor. We liked this matt, evenly backlit display and found that it could produce 89.3 per cent of the RGB colour gamut, which is really good for a budget monitor. You can buy the PC for £84 less without the monitor, but given its quality and value, the entire PC as a package makes sense. The wired Logitech keyboard and mouse set are a similarly good choice – nothing amazing but comfortable and accurate to use.

Their greater graphical power means that we favour Trinity processors over low-powered Intel equivalents for an all-round family PC. However the relative paucity of motherboard features means that this isn’t quite as good a choice as some comparable systems with either more expansion slots or USB3 support, such as the Wired2Fire Velocity VX.