MaximumPC 2001 11

74 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011 |www.maximumpc.com

D

o great minds think

alike, or is Silver-

stone’s SG07 chassis

just that cool? We suspect the

SG07 is just that cool. After

all, the chassis that Cyber-

Power used for its LAN Party

EVO Mini happens to be the

same chassis we used for our

“Wee Ass-Kicking Machine”

(Build It, December).

As with the WAKM, the

SG07 limits you to a single

PCI-E slot and a Mini-ITX

board, but that doesn’t mean

the CyberPower and WAKM

are the same. In fact, they

couldn’t be more diff erent.

The LAN Party EVO Mini

features AMD’s new Radeon

HD 6870 card, while the

WAKM used a Gigabyte 1GB

GeForce GTX 460 card. The

WAKM used a Zotac board with

integrated Wi-Fi, while Cyber-

Power reaches for a Gigabyte

GA-H55N-USB3 board.

The real drama here is CPU

choice. Both mini rigs use Intel

chips, but while the WAKM used

the awesome 2.93GHz Core i7-870

quad-core, CyberPower opts for a Core i5-655K.

The K denotes that the chip is unlocked to

aid overclocking, and CyberPower takes

advantage of that by pushing the chip up

to 4.32GHz. For the 655K, which has been

publicly overclocked to 5GHz, it’s no stretch.

We didn’t overclock the proc in our own

mini because the stock LGA1156 cooler isn’t

the greatest for that purpose. CyberPower

overcomes its rig’s thermal limitations by

somehow stuffi ng an Asetek 550LC into the

tiny chassis.

Despite the overclock, we were pretty

confi dent that the Wee Ass-Kicking Machine

would prevail. With its 120GB SSD and quad-

core, surely the LAN Party

EVO Mini would get dusted,

right? Wrongness.

While the LAN Party EVO

Mini is second place in three

of our benchmarks, it actually

managed to beat the Wee Ass-

Kicking Machine in two bench-

marks and tie it in another. A

quick glance at our benchmark

chart will tell you what hap-

pened: In the multithreaded

apps where more cores matter,

the LAN Party EVO Mini loses

by 16 to 17 percent. The three

apps where it wins or ties don’t

exploit the extra two cores in

the WAKM, which gives the

higher clocks in the LAN Party

EVO Mini the advantage. In

the gaming benchmarks, the

CyberPower loses in STALKER,

but its clock advantage pushes

it up over the top in Far Cry 2.

For the most part, it’s a bench-

mark draw.

Mind you, we run our

standard desktop bench-

marks at 2560x1600 to stress

super-gaming machines. On

single-GPU, sub-$1,500 boxes,

it’s not the best representation of the resolu-

tion at which most people will play. In other

words, at 1920x1080, both machines would

run just about anything you could throw at

them today.

In the end, the CyberPower LAN Party

Mini EVO is a sweet, compact little rig. It’s

also pretty palatable at $1,250—a nice dis-

count over our WAKM, which tilted the scale

to $1,653. So, it’s cheaper, just about even

in performance, and it’s even water-cooled.

In our book, that’s a win. –GORDON MAH UNG

CyberPower LAN Party EVO Mini

Can a dual-core take on a quad-core? Yes, it can

Stuffed somewhere in the Silverstone Chassis

is a water-cooling system.

VERDICT

$1,250, http://www.cyberpowerpc.com

9

Fast, small, and

water-cooled.

Will lag in apps

optimized for quad-

cores or greater.

GARY COLEMAN

CYBERPOWER LAN PARTY MINI EVO

GARY GLITTER

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Stuffed somewhere in the Silverstone Chassis

SPECIFICATIONS

Processor Intel 3.2GHz Core i5-655K

Mobo Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3

RAM 4GB Kingston DDR3/1800

Videocard AMD Radeon 6870 1GB

Soundcard Onboard

Storage 2TB Hitachi 7K2000

Optical Optiarc AD-7560S

Case/PSU Silverstone SG07 / Silverstone 600-

watt PSU

ZERO POINT

4,028

428

1,418

2,703

26.5

64.4

Our current small form factor test bed consists of a quad-core 2.93GHz Core i7-870, 4GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 RAM on a Zotac H55ITX-A-E board. We’re running a Gigabyte GTX N460OC-1G1 graphics card, 120GB Corsair Force F120 SSD, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

Vega Pro 9 (sec)

Lightroom 2.6 (sec)

ProShow 4 (sec)

Reference 1.6 (sec)

STALKER: CoP (fps)

Far Cry 2 (fps)

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

BENCHMARKS

400400

4,770 (-16%)(-16%)

1,433 (-1%)(-1%)

3,109 (-13%)(-13%)

22.9 (-14%)(-14%)

75.675.6