You’ll find a series of ports located on the top panel, including two USB Type-A 3.1 ports, one USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 connection, and a headphone jack. This allows you to connect essential peripherals and device chargers you need easy access to. Of course, you also have the power button, and three additional buttons join it: two for the RGB lighting, and one for a hard restart.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
On the back panel, you’ll find five more USB-A ports (2.0 and 3.1), an RJ-45 jack for Ethernet, and three audio ports. Peripherals with legacy USB-A cables are definitely covered, but you’ll need a hub or dongle to connect more USB-C devices. Meanwhile, the GPU features three DisplayPort 2.1 ports and one HDMI 2.1 port. For connectivity, you get Wi-Fi 6 for wireless internet and Bluetooth 5.3 for your peripherals. While these have been superseded by Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 in leading-edge fare, I wouldn’t hold it against this budget machine.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
As I mentioned earlier, you can pop open the glass panel to start tinkering: You’ll find two thumbscrews in the back for your convenience. While the side panel might be tricky to attach properly, at least the interior has plenty of room for tinkering and part swapping.
For cooling, the system features four case fans, which, along with the air cooler on the CPU, can get somewhat loud when the system is under load. The fans are inconsistent, though; they rev up and down at random intervals when between demanding tasks, too, which can be a distraction if it catches my attention without headphones.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
CyberPowerPC built this rig around an Asus B860M Max Gaming AX motherboard. This MicroATX board features four PCI Express slots: The free three are a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot in x4 mode, alongside two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots in x1 mode, which can accommodate accessories such as a capture card. The fourth slot, occupied by the graphics card, is a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. The board includes three M.2 storage slots, one occupied by a 2TB drive in our configuration. (One of the unused M.2 slots is hidden on the reverse side of the board.) The board packs four DIMM slots (two open, in our configuration) that can host up to 256GB of RAM if you use 64GB modules. The slots support Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) settings and accept CUDIMM memory modules. Our unit came with twin TeamGroup T-Force 16GB modules. If you want to add old-school SATA SSDs or platter drives, the case has bays for two 2.5-inch drives and one 3.5-inch hard drive.
That’s all good stuff for a budget system. One of the few quibbles we have with the configuration, though, is future-looking. You might encounter constraints if upgrading the CPU or GPU in the coming years, because the Gamer Xtreme is equipped with a 600-watt 80 Plus Gold power supply (PSU), which limits the available juice. (The RTX 5060 alone requires a 550W PSU at minimum.) A 600W PSU is more than enough power for this configuration, but upgrading to a more potent current-generation graphics card beyond the RTX 5060 might not be possible without replacing the PSU, too, with a higher-wattage model. And if the next generation of xx60-level Nvidia graphics cards requires more than a 600W power supply, then you’ll have no choice but to upgrade two parts at once.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Likewise, the Core Ultra 5 225 CPU is rated for 65W base power; go much further up Intel’s line, and you will see higher base and turbo power-consumption measures that could bump up against the PSU’s limits. In short, this PSU is well-suited to the parts CyberpowerPC supplies in the system, but it might require replacement down the line if you get too upgrade-ambitious.
