CyberPower Inc. Xtreme Gamer Platinum Pro Review

Overall Rating

Price & Delivery

Continual problems and very poor support, leading to major downtime.

A quick summation: In less than a year my Cyberpower PC:

 Needed to be returned TWICE for repairs
 Had THREE hard drives fail from 2 different manufacturers
 Had a power supply failure
 Did not come with proper installation disks, had to download them (without a working PC)
 Had a video card failure, was told I did not need to return the defective card, but then they charged my credit card without authorization or even notification.
 Has been out of service (return or down with hardware failure) for 11 weeks total
 Has needed to be backed up so many times I have 20 CD's and 6 DVD's of backups
 I have personally spent at least 70 hours repairing and attempting to keep it running
 All in LESS THAN 12 MONTHS SINCE PURCHASE


For anyone interested in the specifics:

Ordered a system on 10/2/04, at a good price. Ordering was easy, shipped on-time, arrived on-time. Upon inspection there were several problems; floppy drive not connected, top USB connections were not connected to the mother board, sound jumper/connection not working, temperature display not hooked up, and physical damage to the top plate (despite no visible damage to the shipping box). I connected and fixed all the problems and Cyberpower shipped the replacement for the damaged part. Only what arrived was entirely different than the damaged part and of no use. At this point the whole system needed to ship back to be fixed. This was only a couple weeks after getting the PC and now it was gone for 3 weeks (1 week shipping each way, 1 week repair time).

Finally got it back and for awhile it ran fine, a bit loud, but performance was good. Then started noticing the PC would freeze up accompanied by a faint noise. This turned out to be one of the hard drives failing, luckily I was able to back everything up. Unfortunately just troubleshooting this issue took repeated phone calls, now to PC Help Desk who provides the support. Finally after hours of troubleshooting they authorized a new hard drive to be shipped. The troubleshooting involved multiple virus scans, diagnostic software, and several Windows reinstalls. Initially I could not even try to reinstall the OS, since the CD and disk shipped with the PC DID NOT WORK. I needed to get access to a second PC (since my brand new one was not functioning) to go online to download the correct drivers and software.

The new drive took a week to show up, then another 4 days to coordinate with the onsite Tech to install it (I have onsite service). After watching him spend all of 10 minutes physically swapping out the drives, but nothing else, it was obvious I could have done it myself. I thought he would install Windows, all the updates, and drivers and get the PC functioning again. He said he was only authorized to swap the hardware.

New drive in, hours spent reinstalling Windows and updates, anti-virus software and updates, drivers, etc. The system worked well for about 6 weeks, when I noticed the freezing up problem again. This time the troubleshooting took even longer. Could be a virus. Could be a bad program, I was advised to install 1 piece of software a day to see which program was causing the problem. Luckily after just installing the operating system the problem recurred and a second new hard drive was shipped. By this time I had about 20 CD's and 6 DVD's worth of backups. As well as 50 - 75 hours of my time troubleshooting and fixing the PC. This time I installed the hard drive myself. Again I was without the PC for weeks. In fact I didn't even get to use it for video editing or as a music library for months since I was reluctant to reload everything until I was certain it was working correctly.
Had the PC running again for 3 weeks, when lines and funny characters started showing up on the screen. Another call to tech support, back and forth, more wasted time and now a new video card was being shipped to me for replacement. Again could not use it for weeks. Finally get the new video card installed and the PC was again working. That is until 4 weeks later, when poof the whole thing shut down. This time pushing the power button produced a brief flash of light and nothing else. Once again it needed to be shipped back to Cyberpower for repair, gone for 3 weeks. The repair involved; a 3rd hard drive, video card, and power supply replacements, on a system less than a year old!

So in less than 12 months, it has inoperable for close to 3 months, about 25% of the time. Cyberpower refuses to extend my warranty. The latest insult was charging my credit $429 without any notice, let alone authorization. This was for the video card failure. I was told, 'no need to return the defective card'. Then 3 weeks later, they charged me for not returning the video card!?

That is my experience with Cyberpower up to now. I am just waiting for the next problem, as the only thing I am certain of is, something else will go wrong. In summary, I would take bamboo chutes under my fingernails before ever buying ANYTHING from Cyberpower. To all those who have written positive reviews and feel they got 'lucky' when everything worked on arrival, all I can say is 'just wait'. Write back in a year and post your Cyberpower horror stories.

Members' Comments onevd's Review

• libtech on 17th Nov 2006

  So true! I haven't hit the half year mark yet and this is happening. The hinge on my CyberPower Inc. Xtreme Gamer Platinum Pro computer keeps popping out, and it is causing a stress fracture on the back of the LCD chassis on my laptop. At first I thought this was going to be okay...