Review: Cyberpower Gamer Infinity NUS400 desktop computer

We keep hearing that notebook computer sales are increasing to the detriment of desktop sales, but there remain advantages to the larger non-mobile kind of computers, mainly the price, which can be much cheaper than that of the equivalent notebook.

One are in which notebooks are particularly popular is student computer, with an abundance of cheap, lightweight notebooks available for students to take to lectures and home for the holidays. The Cyberpower Gamer Infinity is an attempt on this market, offering a fairly powerful home computer for just £399, and further enticing students by offering them a 10 per cent discount on production of an NUS card.

However, the catch here is that the price does not include a display or any other peripherals such as a keyboard or mouse, meaning that first-time computer owners or those who have until now been sharing the family PC will have to shell out some more money to get a complete system.

Performance-wise the Gamer Infinity was a mixed bag. Recognising that students are almost as likely to be playing games as working, it is equipped with an Nvidia Geforce 9600GT graphics card that has 512MB of its own memory. That's not the most powerful card around but we'd have expected better performance from it in games than what we saw, which was decidedly mediocre.

The computer comes with 2GB of memory, which is about average but is certainly enough for almost all tasks. The Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 processor is likewise reasonably powerful, certainly given the price of the computer. Between the memory and the processor, as well as running standard office and internet applications, this computer should be able to easily cope with power-hungry video or photo editing programs.

The only extra software on top of the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system is the free Openoffice suite, which admittedly includes a spreadsheet and word processor to allow users to get going straight away. Storage is courtesy of a reasonably capacious 320GB hard disk as well as a DVD writer that includes Lightscribe technology, so it can write a professional-looking label directly to the top of special discs.

The case of the Gamer Infinity PC is not easy to hide away. Instead it’s big and bulky and would need to be pushed under a big table to be hidden from view. Opening up the case shed a little light onto this. It has an extra four hard disk bays, which can be used to add extra storage at a later date.

Along the front of the desktop sit two USB sockets, as well as headphone and microphone sockets. The computer comes with a good three-year warranty (under which the company will collect it if it breaks) that should see most students through the course of their degrees with the same computer.

The CyberPower Gamer Infinity may not entirely live up to its gaming name but it certainly provides enough power for most students, particularly those of a more academic bent. The only real qualm we have is that you'll need to factor in the cost of a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers to make it into a complete computer.