Product On Review: Ultra 55 Next Day PC
Manufacturer: Cyberpower PC UK
System Price (UK MSRP): £799.20 inc. V.A.T. (as configured)
Introduction
Summer has returned, its erratic heat beating down on the Northern Hemisphere as children, young adults and lucky others enjoy well-earned time off. Many will be spending it outside soaking up some rays, but an increasing number will be parked inside enjoying the plethora of new games available on PC in recent and coming months. Furthermore autumn is still months away yet the next educational year will be haunting some thoughts, with diligent preparation already underway. So what better time to invest in a new system, angling for one that doesn’t wage war on the wallet?
For this we’re returning to Cyberpower PC UK, eschewing their high-end systems in favour of an affordable variant of their Ultra 55 pre-configured range. This Ultra 55 is built on AMD’s entry-level AM4 platform with a configuration that targets 1080p gaming, but following-through with scope for later upgrades should your needs change over its life-span.
The Ultra 55 is an uneasy balance of parts necessitated by the needs of building to a tight price point. Its beating heart is AMD’s Ryzen 5 5500, a 6c/12t CPU that has been paired with an MSI A520 chipset motherboard and DDR4 RAM. Cooling it is Cooler Master’s Hyper 212 Spectrum, an attractive model of air cooler that will easily handle the system’s processor.
These veteran components are joined by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 8GB, itself a modest upgrade over its predecessor but still up to the task set. As a 40-series GPU it supports all of NVIDIA’s latest RTX technologies including hardware-accelerated ray tracing, DLSS, DLAA and (potentially crucially) frame-generation technology; it is however firmly pigeonholed into 1080p resolution gaming due to its 8GB frame buffer.
Joining the mATX A520 motherboard and 16GB of DDR4 memory is a 1TB M.2 SSD from Kingston. That’s capacious enough for the Operating System and plenty of games, and will ensure fast boot times and generally smooth OS operation. Games too will benefit, although the results will tend to be more subtle except in isolated instances such as specific MMOs and RPGs.
Putting the finishing touches to the setup is the Cyberpower-branded mid-tower chassis, complete with four 120mm RGB fans. An Inwin B65E 650W PSU keeps the system ticking while allowing for some modest additions to the base specification over time. Finally, this review system also shipped with an optional ASRock 100Hz 1080p monitor, on-paper an ideal complement to finish off a package that’s almost immediately ready to unbox and start gaming.
At £799.20 inc. V.A.T. and delivery, this system is at the upper-end of what we’d deem to be a budget system. It’s still a considered purchase but also comes in well under the important £1000 threshold. We’ll find out how it stacks up in terms of value for money shortly.
