Cyberpower Achilles Pro 4K Gaming System Review

Performance Analysis

With a 4.5GHZ Core i7-4790K under the hood, it wasn't surprising to see the Achilles Pro 4K topping many of our benchmarks. Overall, it was nearly 300 points faster in the Media Benchmarks, with only the Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition beating it once overclocked. The faster memory will also have helped the CPU better our own 4.8GHz CPU result for this Intel chip, making up for the 300MHz deficit in clock speed.

Raw CPU grunt wasn't enough to do this in Cinebench R15, though, where the Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition was again faster, this time even at stock speed, thanks to its additional cores, but the Cyberpower Achilles Pro 4K's Core i7-4790K still posted a respectable result that was considerably faster than a Core i5-4690K.

In our game tests, Battlefield 4 was just about playable at 3,840 x 2,160 - the monitor's native resolution, although only AMD's monstrous Radeon R9 295X2 8GB managed any kind of significant headroom here. Crysis 3 was too stuttery for our liking, even with anti-aliasing disabled, so you'll need to dial down the graphics settings here to get smooth frame rates. Even so, the only setup to manage a faster result was again the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB in our own graphics test rig. Finally, Bioshock Infinite was perfectly playable at 4K, although as with most of our game tests, there were little gains over a stock speed GTX 780 Ti - this was compared to our graphics test system albeit with a different and slower CPU.


Under extreme full load using Prime95's smallfft's test and a looping Unigine Valley test, the system wasn't particularly quiet, mostly due to the Corsair H60 in the rear of the case making quite a din. Even then the CPU was decidedly toasty at a delta T of 69°C, with the graphics card a more reasonable 52°C. Sadly, the fans were wired up to seemingly run at full speed most of the time. This was a shame as the idle temperatures were very low indeed, with the GPU idling with a delta T of just 7°C. Power consumption peaked at 523W, while at idle the PC drew 207W from the wall, mostly due to the overclocked CPU.

Conclusion

As a 4K gaming PC the Achilles Pro 4K just about makes it into smooth frame rate territory although in some games, most notably in Crysis 3, you'll be left with little option but to tune down the graphics. This is no fault of the PC itself, but with the current crop of graphics hardware you really need two high performance GPUs (either two physical cards or a dual GPU monster like the R9 295X2) rather than one to get above 25fps all the time on the minimum frame rate at 4K. Of course, you'd always be able to add a second GTX 780 Ti at a later date with little fuss. As for the raw specification, we'd perhaps have opted for a cheaper Core i5-4690K and put the cash towards a bigger SSD and quieter fans or fan controller - these are the only sticking points. It's not the quietest PC we've used since all fans are wired up to NZXTs Grid 12V fan hub, but this does mean the insides are extremely neat and tidy.

Also, on the plus side, the Achilles Pro 4K looks fantastic. The NZXT H440 case's aesthetics are sublime, especially so in white, and the illuminated interior will make the PC stand out from the crowd. The CPU is ridiculously fast too - certainly as fast as you'll get before making the leap to a much more expensive LGA2011-based system and the PC is suitably nippy in general thanks to the inclusion of an SSD. The addition of an Ultra HD monitor in the price makes this a very easy way to have a 4K system up and running in short order and the Achilles Pro 4K will certainly appeal if you're keen to jump on the 4K bandwagon with as little fuss as possible.