Introduction

iBUYPOWER builds highly customizable gaming notebooks and then slaps a reasonable price tag upon them. They offer a wide variety of models, ranging in size from 11-inches to 17-inches. Once a strictly boutique laptop manufacturer, they have become more mainstream as of late. As you'll see in today's review, the CZ-17 is a testament to why this is the case.

We'll be looking at iBUYPOWER's Valkyrie CZ-17 today. The Valkyrie CZ-17 is one of iBUYPOWER's newest offerings and is a rebranded MSI notebook design. As iBUYPOWER grows, they will start to design their own chassis, but until then, they will likely continue to use ODM products such as this rebranded MSI.

The system is a beast for the asking price. Starting at a mere $1259, the base model comes with a 17-inch, 1920 x 1080 screen, an Intel Ivy Bridge quad-core, an NVIDIA GTX 675M 2GB and 8GB of DDR3 memory. Not shabby specs, especially considering the price.

While we were mostly impressed with the review sample, there are certainly a few things that could be fixed, mostly with the configuration. Since the problems are solvable by adjusting the configuration, they really aren't that big of a deal.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the specifications and configuration options.