CyberPowerPC Warrior Review: "Serviceable at what it does"

The CyberPowerPC Warrior is one of the custom builder's most popular models in the budget gaming space. Armed with some respectable hardware and at a fair price, this build is a solid contender for a best gaming PC in the UK (Cyberpower are in both the US and UK but this machine is a UK-only model) for anyone wanting a reasonably powerful rig for the titles released right now. Keep in mind, though, that this machine is far from a behemoth, and is built to the minimum standards of play, 1080p60, with a few drawbacks in this respect. 

Design and Features

The CyberPowerPC Warrior is a standard and fairly average-looking build as far as the boutique scene is concerned. The CyberpowerPC NR640 Mid Tower Case itself is your everyday plastic chassis with a simple front I/O and straightforward visual design. It does get one thing right with this stripped-back philosophy, though, and that's airflow. Open the rig up and you'll see that the motherboard and components only take up around half the storage space, graphics card included. Things are a little empty, to say the least.

This means that there's an argument to be made for upgrading this rig in the future. Speaking specifically about what we have inside the box, there's a 650W PSU, which should be more than enough juice to swap out the entry-level Ampere for something a little more capable in the future if desired. One thing I dislike is the outdated rear I/O that's present on the CyberPowerPC Warrior, as the B560M Pro-E MSI in use here is one of the cheapest consumer boards on the market (retailing at around £65) and it shows. Although you've got 4x USB 3.0 ports here, there are also a lot of ugly and old connections, such as PS/2 and VGA that you're going to want to stay away from. 

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I won't go so far as to say that it overtly cheapens the overall look of the CyberPowerPC Warrior, but it certainly doesn't scream high-quality as made by a boutique builder even with its fair asking price. While I wasn't expecting USB C connections and USB 3.2 as standard, it is discouraging to see manufacturers still pedaling this old gear that no (OK, maybe very few) PC gamers want or use anymore. 

Performance 

This CyberPowerPC Warrior build has one thing in mind for PC gamers in 2022, and that's to provide playable framerates in two popular resolutions without breaking the bank. As you would expect from a budget built costing around the $1,200/£1,100 mark. You've got a previous generation i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and a previous generation Gen 3.0 NVMe SSD, so things are fairly standard here. However, given what we normally see with machines at this price range (exactly £1,117.20 at Amazon), this is a fairer option, albeit one with few surprises on the offset. 

First impressions aren't everything, though. In our industry-standard tests, we've got respectable figures from 3D Mark and PC Mark 10 which is very much in line with what we've seen from machines running entry-level hardware like this. The RTX 3060 inside the CyberPowerPC Warrior can hold its own as far as DX11, DX12, and ray tracing performance in the 3D Mark tests respectively. 

The one major caveat you may be able to see here is that the included 1TB NVMe drive isn't exactly one of the best SSDs for gaming even by Gen 3.0 standards. The average rates that we usually see from older boot drives such as this tend to hover around the 3,500 MB/s mark respectively, so not only are you not getting the most up-to-date generation with your storage, but you're also not hitting that cap either. It's worth reiterating that even a middle-of-the-road Gen 3.0 is still significantly faster than your traditional SATA drive, which usually runs at around 550 MB/s. 

The CyberPowerPC Warrior is a machine built for keeping up with today's games in 1080p - but 1440p performance isn't too bad either. This machine is targeting 1080p60 through and through, though, and doesn't do a terrible job in maintaining. Even in demanding titles, such as Metro Exodus and Red Dead Redemption II, I saw playable framerates across the board when cranking those sliders up to their highest settings, but you shouldn't expect high framerates even at these lower resolutions except in well-optimized titles. If you're looking for a powerhouse of a machine to push the best gaming monitors to their limits then you'll need to look elsewhere. 

With 1440p as a baseline, you can expect playable sub-60 frame rates while cranking the settings to High and Highest. I'm sure that if you're economical with your sliders, or utilize the likes of GeForce Experience's Game Optimization features, you should be able to keep things stable while benefitting from the added bump up in clarity that QHD brings with it. While far from the main strength, it is technically possible if you're willing to make a few compromises where necessary. 

Based on my experience with this unit, the CyberPowerPC Warrior is a strong performer for casual gaming, and I personally think that's going to be the sweet spot for a rig of this power level at this price point. As a point of reference, some of our benchmarking games are now pushing towards four years old, and this computer doesn't exactly surge through with flying colors, meaning I cannot speak for the futureproofing qualities of this configuration. 

That's not to say that's the rule. Well-optimized games, such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider's performance, do paint an encouraging picture here. Given the prowess of the RTX 3060, itself running 12GB GDDR6 memory, there should be more than enough VRAM here to run games in Full HD without having to compromise the visual fidelity too much. 

Should you buy the CyberPowerPC Warrior? 

The CyberPowerPC Warrior is a decent performing budget machine for 1080p gaming in casual titles, that's sure to see most people through this generation of titles with few issues. For those wanting high frame rates and higher resolutions, this rig does respectably, but not consistently, so you're going to want to up your budget in this respect. 

Overall, for the asking price, (£1,117.20 in the UK), you're getting hardware that's in line with current market trends even if they don't set the world on fire. Keep in mind, that this isn't a future-proofed machine, as it struggled in older titles when cranking the sliders high. If you know what you're getting into though, and can keep your expectations based in reality, the CyberPowerPC Warrior is just about serviceable at what it does for those UK-based PC gamers wanting something good enough for right now. 

How we tested the CyberPowerPC Warrior

I used the CyberPowerPC Warrior for around a week which replaced my usual daily driver gaming PC. With this system, I ran our usual benchmark games and industry-standard tests to decide my verdict. You can find out more about how we test gaming PCs in our full GamesRadar Hardware Policy. 

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