23HOW WE TEST
Computeractive is owned by Future PLC,
which employs a team of specialist
technical reviewers. You’ll often read
references to our benchmark testing,
which is a method of assessing products
using the same criteria. For example, we
test the speed of every PC and the battery
life of every phone and tablet in exactly
the same way. This makes our reviews
authoritative, rigorous and accurate.
Future PLC also owns the magazines
Maximum PC, PC Pro and T3, and the
websites Laptop Mag (www.laptopmag.
com), TechRadar (www.techradar.com)
and Windows Central (www.windows
central.com). This means we can test
thousands of products before choosing
the most relevant for Computeractive.FAIR AND IMPARTIAL
Our writers follow strict guidelines to
ensure the reviews are fair and impartial.
The manufacturer has no involvement in
our tests.OUR AWARDS
We award every product
that gets five stars our
Buy It! stamp of approval.
It means we were
extremely impressed by the product, and
we think you will be too.Every product that gets a
four-star review is given the
Recommended award. We
highly recommend these
products, although they just fail to meet the
high standard of our Buy It! winners.PRICES
Our reviews contain a link to the best price
we found online at the time of press.Issue 632 • 25 May – 7 June 2022However, it lags behind our current
favourite Windows PC, the Wired2Fire
Ultima WS Home Office Workstation,
which is around 70 per cent faster
again in Windows tests. Note that the
Wired2Fire PC lacks a graphics card,
though, so isn’t nearly as adept for
gaming.
There are a few other compromises.
The motherboard is a basic MSI Pro
B660M-E microATX model, which
lacks many of the features found in
most of the motherboards in PCs
we’ve reviewed recently. For example,
it only has two slots for memory, so
upgrading RAM would probably require
you to remove what’s already there.
Similarly, there’s also only a single
M.2 slot for the SSD storage. It doesn’t
have Wi-Fi networking built in, so
Cyberpower has added Wi-Fi 5, which
takes up more space than it ought to,
eating into the potential for upgrading
further in the future.
This is a decent PC, then, if you’re
looking for graphics power, but you’d
need to spend a bit more money to get
a better all-rounder.SPECIFICATIONS
Four-core Intel Core i3-12100F processor •• 16GB
memory •• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card ••
1TB M.2 SSD •• Wi-Fi 5 •• Ethernet port •• HDMI port •• 4x
USB 3.0 ports •• 4x USB 2.0 ports •• Windows 11 Home- • 460x210x428mm (HxWxD) •• Five-year warranty
http://www.snipca.com/41829
In contrast to the Acer Aspire XC-1660
opposite, the Cyberpower Infinity X123
RTX is an exercise in seeing how much
you can stuff into a PC case and still keep
it to a reasonable price of £1,000. The
headline inclusion is an Nvidia GeForce
RTX 3050 graphics card, which at the
time of writing would cost around £350
to buy on its own.
That equates to over one third of the
overall price, so if you like to crank up the
visual settings when you next load up
Microsoft Flight Simulator, for example,
it will be a godsend. In our tests, it ran
games at an average frame rate of more
than 60fps at 1080p resolution, with
the graphical settings turned up high. If
you have a monitor that supports it, it
even does well at 1440p, though it’s
probably asking a little much of it to
go up to 4K resolution.
To budget for this powerful graphics
card, Cyberpower has opted for an Intel
Core i3-12100F
processor, which is
a 12th-generation
model with only
four cores – though
these will be fine
for everyday
Windows tasks.
The processor is
helped along by
16GB of RAM and a
1TB SSD. In our
general Windows
tests, this proved
30 per cent faster
than than the
Aspire XC-1660.
PC ❘ £1,000 from Cyberpower http://www.snipca.com/41829
Cyberpower Infinity X123 RTX
Graphics for a grand
VERDICT Powerful graphics for
gamers, but it comes at the expense
of Windows performance and upgrade
potential★★★★★
ALTERNATIVE PCSpecialist
Fusion Elite £1,399 More expensive,
but worth it if
you want decent
graphics for
gaming and
superior Windows
performanceFor those who
want high-quality
visuals, this is great
value for money