CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System

CyberPower launches the Fang Series. Did Chris get bitten by the Black Mamba?

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: CyberPower
19 minutes & 19 seconds read time

Introduction


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System



CyberPower has been busy playing with Intel's gaming development team over the last few weeks. The two have teamed up to design a new series of PC systems that CyberPower will be manufacturing and offering as the Fang Series. The flagship system in the Fang Series family is the Black Mamba which is the system we will be reviewing today. CyberPower will have other systems coming along in the coming weeks that will also follow the snake theme like the Cobra, Viper and Rattler.

Our sample Black Mamba that we are reviewing today comes with Venom technology. This is actually a fancy way of saying it is overclocked from the CyberPower factory and tested for a couple of days to determine the maximum stable overclock speed in a series of tests that are designed to let the engineers configure your system for both maximum stability and speed.

The true core of the Black Mamba is Intel's new Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor. Intel has launched the new 975 EE just yesterday and CyberPower has been working with Intel and GIGABYTE closely for this launch. The new i7 975 EE is the fastest processor currently available on the market with a rated out of the box speed of 3.33 GHz. Intel, GIGABYTE and CyberPower determined that the maximum overclock speed with our sample was 4.15 GHz, or as I referred to it during the testing phase, freaking fast! - If you didn't catch it already, you can read up on our Core i7 975 EE processor review here.

As the flagship system, the Black Mamba with Venom Technology has a standard cost of 3,999.00 USD. CyberPower offers their customers the opportunity to make changes to the configuration while ordering the system so it is possible to get the system exactly how you want it for both performance and budget. Let's take a look and see how the system comes standard and if it is possible to build the Black Mamba with off the shelf parts for less money than what CyberPower charges for the system.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability




Processor: Intel Core i7 975 EE
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
Memory: Kingston HyperX 1600 MHz 6GB DDR3 Kit
Graphics Card: Dual GIGABYTE GTX 285 in SLi
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower 1000w
Hard Disk (Boot): Dual Western Digital VelociRaptors in RAID 0
Hard Disk (Storage): Seagate 1.5 TB 32MB Cache
Optical Disk 1: ASUS 16x DVD (DVD-E616A3T)
Optical Disk 2: LG 6x Blu-Ray Rewrite with HD DVD (GGW-H20L)
Chassis: Cooler Master Storm Series Sniper
Cooling: Asetek LCLC Liquid Cool CPU Cooler
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit
Keyboard: Razer Lycosa
Mouse: Razer Lachesis

As you can see from the system specifications we are starting off with a true bad ass system that will make your LAN party buddies tremble with fear. Speaking of LAN parties, the Cooler Master Sniper is a natural choice for taking your system on the road. The Sniper has two handles that allow you to simply pick up the system with ease and move it from one place to another. We will take a closer look at the Cooler Master Sniper in the outside pictures a few pages from now.

GIGABYTE had a large supporting role to aid CyberPower in preparing the Venom settings. GIGABYTE's engineers put in a lot of time getting the system settings perfect and the Black Mamba features GIGABYTE's X58 Extreme motherboard as well as GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 285 graphics cards that run in SLi. The X58 Extreme UD5 is one of the fastest X58 motherboards I have used to date and the layout of the board has everything you want to see in an enthusiast system. Let's also not forget the fact that the GA-EX58UD5 supports 3-way SLi and CrossFire, something that you may want to take advantage of later on down the line.

CyberPower has not jumped on the solid state bandwagon just yet for their desktop systems, but they did choose the best in traditional platter drives for the operating system boot drives. A pair of Western Digital VelociRaptors gets your system up and running very quickly and will allow you to get into a game level before most others are even connected. The VelociRaptors are a proven technology that works well in RAID 0, something that we can't always say about solid state drives.

The Black Mamba is the first full system we have reviewed to come standard with a Blu-ray writer. The LG Super Multi Blue (GGW-H20L) is able to burn DVD and Blu-ray disks as well as play back HD-DVD movies. The drive is paired with an ASUS QuieTrack 16x DVD player that will allow you to rip DVDs to the LG multi-drive on the fly. Both drives are SATA so you will not have to worry about making coasters out of your disks.

After spending an hour or so at Newegg configuring a nearly identical system, we came up with a retail price of 3961 USD. This price did not include shipping and a few components needed to be sourced from other etailers because Newegg did not have them in stock or doesn't carry them. We also didn't include the cost of the software that CyberPower installs at the factory for DVD playback in the Newegg cost.

This is very close to CyberPower's retail on the Black Mamba, but you should also consider everything that goes into building a high performance enthusiast system. For me time is the biggest expense when building any computer system. Sure I can whip up a system in under 7 minutes if everything is all laid out like it was in the Tiger Direct System Builder Contest at CES this past January; but a real world build, including software and cable routing takes me nearly half a day. I would gladly pay someone to build a system for me if it meant I had a Saturday to clean out the garage or mow the yard, anything other than sitting in the computer room putting pieces together. I have just outgrown that stage and there are several other people out there that feel the same way. These are the guys CyberPower is marketing their high performance systems to.

Let's move on and take a look at the system.

Packaging




If you spend the money on a product, you want it to arrive in one piece. Countless times products have arrived at my door and the outside package has been destroyed, yet the inner contents were fine. That story can go both ways, though. I have had my share of surprises when a package shows little damage and the contents inside were shattered. It all comes down to how a product is packaged.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Here is a good example of why packaging is so important. We can see that the outside package has been dropped, kicked, banged, smacked and who knows what else during shipping.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


On the side we see that the shipping company has even gouged a corner of the box with something sharp. Let's see if the inner packaging saved our new computer system like it should.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


After opening the box we see that notebook bag that is filled with a t-shirt. CyberPower gives these out with many of their systems. There is also a copy of the build order right on top so you can confirm the contents of the package. Protecting the rest of the components is a dual layer of high density foam.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Peeling away a layer of foam reveals the boxed keyboard, mouse and GIGABYTE video cards.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Just under the accessories is another layer of high density foam. Here you can see just how thick this protection is. CyberPower uses three layers of dual section foam; one below the system box, one between the system box and the accessories and one above the accessories.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The system is packaged in the Cooler Master Sniper box that is suspended inside two sections of close cell white foam for even more protection.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Not to beat the horse here, but the video cards are also packaged separately outside of the system. The current high end video cards come standard with very large and very heavy heatsinks that can tear a PCIe connector to pieces. Because of this is it much safer to have the cards shipped outside of the system. I was asked if I wanted them installed or in separate boxes, I chose separate boxes since I have already ruined a few flagship cards in my day due to poor shipping practices. I am glad CyberPower offers customers the choice. The packaging is A1!

The CyberPower Black Mamba - Exterior


CyberPower Black Mamba - Exterior

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The front of the Cooler Master Sniper offers great air flow through the bezel. On the bottom Cooler Master installs a massive 200 X 30mm fan that produces only 23db at full tilt. The fan is also controlled by a knob on top of the case that allows you to turn the blue lights on or off as well as control the speed of the fan.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


One of my favourite views of the Sniper case; the side panel is just sexy but really comes to life when the system is on and you can see all of the motherboard lights dancing around.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The GIGABYTE X58 Extreme motherboard offers an impressive amount of I/O options as well as a clear CMOS button on the back. At the top GIGABYTE also includes both optical and Coax S/PDIF.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The other side of the case is solid but is designed so you can route cables, keeping them out of sight as well as out of the natural air flow of the case.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The dual optical drives sit at the top of the case in the 5 ¼ bays.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Cooler Master included a good assortment of I/O ports on the top of the case. The large knob in the middle controls the fan speed for the two 200mm fans in the system. The button in the middle lets you turn on or off the blue LEDs in the fans. On the far left side is where you will find power and reset buttons.

The CyberPower Black Mamba - Internals


CyberPower Black Mamba- Internals

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


In the overall view of the Black Mamba we see lots of wide open space that will allow cool fresh air to flow through the system. CyberPower has done a very good job routing cables outside of the air path and gives the system a clean look.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


We have seen the Asetek Low Cost Liquid Cooler (LCLC) used in a few systems now and it has always been able to give us good overclocks. The cooler is quiet and allows for good overclocks without going overboard on an expensive water cooling loop.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The Thermaltake ToughPower 1000 watt has also been installed in several of the systems we have reviewed and it does a really good job at keeping the rails within the ATX specifications.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The memory for the Black Mamba comes from Kingston's high-end HyperX series. Each module is rated at 1600 MHz and they feed the processor data very quickly.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The three hard drives are cooled by the 200mm intake fan and as you can see there is room to add more hard drives to the system, should you need to. The system comes with 2.1 TB of total storage capacity so I don't think many people will need to add storage for quite a while.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Both of the optical drives are SATA and here you can see how CyberPower has routed the cables for maximum air flow.

Accessories and Software Configuration


Accessories

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


CyberPower has included several additional power cables with the system so you can easily change video cards at a later date. The two GIGABYTE GTX 285 cards each use two 6-pin PCIe power connectors.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Several manuals are included with the system should you feel like poking around. You also receive a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium X64 and the driver disks for the other components.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The two Razer input devices come in the retail packaging.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


CyberPower also includes a travel bag and t-shirt with the Black Mamba.


Software Configuration

Processes use system resources and can slow down a computer system. Most processes come from the operating system, but many come from the software installed. Here we take a look at how the system comes from the factory.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Paint Shop Pro 6 (psp.exe) was added for the purpose of the review due to its extensive screen capture capabilities. Other than my install the system comes very clean and ready for you to start adding games galore.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The installed software list shows that all of the drivers were installed as well as software for DVD and Blu-ray playback. CyberPower doesn't include any "crapware" that pops up to tell you that you need to go shopping, the system comes clean, just how we like to see them.

Benchmarks List and Testing Configuration


Benchmark List and Testing Configuration

System tests are conducted with the system configured as it arrived to our testing lab. Drivers will only be updated if needed for a particular test, such as a new game added to the program test list that requires a special set of drivers, in which case the pre-installed drivers will be removed. Any driver change will be noted when this occurs.


System Tests
- Boot and Shutdown Times
- FutureMark PCMark Vantage
- BAPCo SYSmark 2007 Preview

Processor and Memory Tests
- EVEREST Cache and Memory
- Passmark
- ScienceMark 2

Disk Tests
- HD Tune
- EVEREST Average Read Access
- Passmark Advanced Tests

Video and Gaming Tests
- FutureMark 3DMark Vantage
- Crysis
- PT Boats Demo
- World in Conflict
- Far Cry 2

Compression and Audio Tests
- Quickpar Create and Repair
- WinRAR
- Microsoft Windows Media Encoder
- RightMark Audio Analyser

Benchmarks - System Tests


Boot Up and Shutdown Times

Windows Vista makes testing the start up and shut down time difficult, since the operating system from the outside seems random. For this test I turned the system on and shut it down three times, measuring the time it took for each test. The average times are then presented, as below.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


We have seen Core i7 systems take up to 88 seconds to boot in the past, but the CyberPower Black Mamba boots in nearly half the time thanks to a well planned out boot order by GIGABYTE.


FutureMark PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage is the first objective hardware performance benchmark for PCs running 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. PCMark Vantage is perfectly suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista PC from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs.

Regardless of whether the benchmarker is an artist or an IT Professional, PCMark Vantage shows the user where their system soars or falls flat, and how to get the most performance possible out of their hardware. PCMark Vantage is easy enough for even the most casual enthusiast to use yet supports in-depth, professional industry grade testing.

ORB Link: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1095472

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The system scored well in all of the tests and shows a very good overall score for both gaming and productivity.


BAPCo SYSmark 2007 Preview

SYSmark 2007 Preview is the latest version of the premier performance metric that measures and compares PC performance based on real world applications. SYSmark 2007 Preview extends the SYSmark family, which has been widely accepted by IT Managers, PC OEMs, press and analysts worldwide to support Windows Vista™.

SYSmark 2007 Preview allows users to directly compare platforms based on Windows Vista™ to those based on Windows XP Professional and Home. The new release also incorporates numerous new features and enhancements such as an improved GUI allowing streamlined start-up and run along with a heads-up-display (HUD) and automated error reporting.

SYSmark 2007 Preview is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Video creation, E-learning, 3D Modeling and Office Productivity. This new release includes a robust and refreshed set of applications.
CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The Black Mamba scored the highest we have ever seen in the SYSmark 2007 Preview Test. It was able to beat the GameRigs Ego by a massive 73 points.

Benchmarks - Processor and Memory Capabilities


EVEREST Cache and Memory

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings.

CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Core i7 allowed Intel to catch up and surpass AMD in memory bandwidth and the new i7 975 EE shows just what the fastest processor on the planet is capable of doing. The 975 EE is also more than doubling the memory read speeds of the Core 2 Duo / Quad processors.


Passmark

Fast, easy to use PC speed testing and benchmarking. PassMark PerformanceTest ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.
The CPU tests cover mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE, 3DNow! instructions and more.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System



ScienceMark 2

ScienceMark 2.0 is a mathematical program designed to stress the memory subsystems of both desktop/workstation and server environments to determine the read/write latency as well as the overall memory bandwidth available between the CPU and the memory controller.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


As you can see, the Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition that CyberPower chose for their Black Mamba with Venom is a very fast processor when paired with the high speed Kingston HyperX 1600 MHz memory.

Benchmarks - Disk Performance


HD Tune

HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following functions:

- Benchmark: measures the performance
- Info: shows detailed information
- Health: checks the health status by using SMART
- Error Scan: scans the surface for errors
- Temperature display

HD Tune may also work with other storage devices such as memory cards, USB sticks, iPods, etc.


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


By choosing dual Western Digital VelociRaptors and running them in RAID 0 CyberPower was able to get a good mix of performance and capacity, something that would be difficult to do with solid state drives.


EVEREST Average Read Access

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings.

CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System

The VelociRaptors are able to keep average access times under 7.5 milliseconds.


Passmark Advanced Disk Tests

This Advanced Disk Test, which is part of PerformanceTest, measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. The speed that data can be transferred between memory and a hard disk drive is one of a system's most important performance aspects. There are quite a few factors which have a bearing on this speed and the Advanced Disk Drive Test allows the user to vary most of these factors and compare the results.


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Most of the game systems we have looked at have come with a Raptor or VelociRaptor as the boot disk and only a few have ventured into setting a pair of them in RAID 0. The Black Mamba advanced disk tests are some of the fastest we have seen to date.

Benchmarks - Gaming


FutureMark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.


ORB Link (Entry):
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1095392

ORB Link (Performance):
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1095412

ORB Link (High):
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1095445

ORB Link (Extreme):
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1095472

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The CyberPower Black Mamba is first and foremost a gaming system and it does an excellent job pushing the pixels.


Crysis

From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving gameplay, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G.

Real time editing, bump mapping, dynamic lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features the CryENGINE™ 2 offers. The CryENGINE™ 2 comes complete with all of its internal tools and also includes the CryENGINE™ 2 Sandbox world editing system.


CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


We tested the Black Mamba at Very High. Normally we only test Crysis at High but the system was so fast we felt it was time to finally take Crysis to the next level. As you can see the Black Mamba was able to take it and still give us playable frame rates in all tests.


PT Boats

PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a naval action simulator that places gamers in charge of a mosquito fleet of the Allied Forces, Russia or Germany during the height of World War II.

Using the latest Direct X 10 technology PT Boards - Knights of the Sea manages to apply a lot of stress to the components of today which in turn gives us quite an intensive benchmark.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


PT Boats is another DirectX10 benchmark that can wreck havoc on a gaming system. Here we see strong performance and were also able to take the test to another level since the Black Mamba uses two GIGABYTE GTX 285 video cards in SLi.

Benchmarks - Gaming Cont.


World in Conflict

World in Conflict is a real-time strategy video game by Massive Entertainment and to be published by Sierra Entertainment for Windows (DX9 and DX10) and the Xbox 360.

The game is set in 1989 where Egonomic troubles cripple the Soviet Union and threaten to dissolve it. However, the title pursues a "what if" scenario where, in this case, the Soviet Union does not collapse and instead pursues a course of war to remain in power. It is an intensive new game is sure to put plenty of stress on even the latest graphics cards and we use the built-in benchmarking for our testing.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The Black Mamba with Venom was one of the first systems to be able to keep all of the minimum frames per second scores above 35.


Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2, the next-generation first-person shooter from Ubisoft, will take you deep into the most beautiful but also most hostile environments in the world: Africa! More than just a visual and technological achievement, Far Cry 2, the true sequel to the award-winning PC game, will provide you with an unprecedented gaming experience.

The Dunia Engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2 by the award-winning Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers the most realistic destructible environments, amazing special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storm effects, real-time night-and-day cycle, dynamic music system, non-scripted enemy A.I. and so much more.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


Far Cry 2 is playable at any resolution so feel free to take it to the moon if you have the monitor that can support it.

Benchmarks - Compression, Encoding and Audio


WinRAR

WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, dEgompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

The built-in "Benchmark and Hardware test" feature allows for quick and easy comparison of decompression times between systems.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


WinRAR plays heavily on processor performance and how your memory is tuned. It is no surprise that the fastest consumer desktop processor was able to give us the fastest WinRAR score we have come across in the lab.


Quickpar Create and Repair

QuickPar is a utility for creating Parity Volumes using the Reed Solomon algorithm. Parity Volumes may be used to verify that a set of files have not been corrupted, or to construct damaged files (providing that you have a sufficient quantity of Parity Volumes to match the missing or damaged files).

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


The same can be said about the Quickpar score. The overclocked Core i7 975 EE and fast memory were able to create and then repair our Vista file test faster than any other full system we have seen to date.


Windows Media Encoder 9

In this test we take a 2 minute 1080p video and encode it into a 720p video. Scoring is determined by the amount of time taken for the task to complete. Lower is better.

The video used for this encoding test is The Magic of Flight (IMAX) which is readily available for download on Microsoft's HD Content Showcase page.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


WME took 4 minutes and 16 seconds to down sample our two minute and two second 1080P video. This is also the fastest we were ever able to perform this test.


RightMark Audio Analyser

RMAA suite is designed for testing quality of analog and digital paths of any audio devices, be it a sound card, an MP3 player, a consumer CD/DVD player or an acoustic set. The results are obtained by playing and rEgording test signals passed through the tested audio path by means of frequency analysis algorithms. A more common mark is also provided for those unfamiliar with measured technical parameters.

A new version is the result of two years of development by best experts in digital audio. RMAA 6.0 raises the bar of comfort and functionality for spectrum analyzers. That's why it is a program of choice for enthusiasts, professionals, and audio magazines around the world; and some manufacturers are developing new devices with the mandatory testing of their quality in RMAA. In short, the program at the moment is a de-facto standard providing quick and easy measurement of technical parameters, without the need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on specialized measurement systems.

CyberPower Black Mamba Venom Core i7 975EE Gaming System


I have to admit that I was surprised by the audio results produced by the latest GIGABYTE X58 Extreme board. We have seen several motherboards score an Excellent rating over the last couple of years. While a Good score is passing it just seems like the board is a little noisy for our liking when it comes to the onboard audio.

If you'd like to view a more in-depth analysis of the results with individual charts, click here.

Final Thoughts




It looks like CyberPower is going to dominate with the launch of another Core i7 flagship processor launch. By the time you read this the Black Mamba with Venom Technology will be available on their website at the cost of 3999.00 USD. This is a full 500 Dollars less than the Black Pearl launched back in November when the Core i7 965 EE was released.

I am not going to sit here comfortably behind my keyboard and tell you that buying the latest and greatest processor is great value, but if you are in the market for such a system it is hard to go wrong with the Black Mamba from CyberPower. The least efficient path to travel down is trying to acquire all of the components separately and building your own since CyberPower was able to put the Black Mamba together for less than you can purchase and ship the components. Taking into account the amount of time it takes to build a full system, configure the software and then find all of the sweet spots for the BIOS settings, I would say that the Black Mamba is a hell of a deal; give it an infomercial and watch the orders come flying in.

The components list for the Black Mamba shows us that CyberPower has not chosen to go down the path of so many others, using custom components of lesser quality. Every part used comes from a big name manufacturers; GIGABYTE, Intel, ASUS, Kingston. It is a virtual who's who of companies known for their high quality products and components used to make them.

With all of the little details laid out it is easy to forget the obvious; the Black Mamba in the standard configuration is one of the fastest systems that money can buy today. If you are in the market for a high quality gaming computer that kicks ass and takes names, put CyberPower on your list of companies to visit. Judging from our previous launch day reviews I have a feeling you will be taking a good look once you start to compare the prices against other system builders, CyberPower seems to just have the connections to do it at a lower cost than anyone else.

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