Cyberpower Ultra R97 Pro Gaming PC Review

Andrew McDonald | 3rd December 2024 | Systems | No Comments

This is Cyberpower PC’s Ultra R97 Pro Gaming PC, a high spec, high performance gaming PC that – assuming you have the cash – is one hell of a machine, and can take pretty much anything you throw at it. Cyberpower sent me this machine so I could do some comparative testing with the Intel Core Ultra launch, and they were kind enough to send over a few extra CPUs for me to test with too, so keep that in mind when reading through this review.

As delivered to me, this machines comes with:

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
32GB DDR5-6400 (Kingston Fury Renegade RGB white)
MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi
AMD RX 7900 XTX (ASRock Phantom Gaming)
Corsair H150i RGB AIO Liquid Cooler
2TB WD Black SN850X SSD
Cyberpower Masterbox 600 (Cooler Master)
MSI A1250GL 1250W PSU
Windows 11 Home

And with that spec – which is slightly changed from the current default spec, namely the RAM for colour and CPU cooler, this comes in at just shy of £2,500 – £2487.60 including VAT specifically.

Build Quality

Cyberpower ship the system in the original case box, which isn’t always ideal, although they do mitigate internal damage by using an expanding foam bag to support the graphics card, and should this have come with an air cooler, it’d support that too. One small note was I had to remove the graphics card’s power cables to remove the foam block as it had expanded behind them. I’m sure that isn’t a massive deal for a regular customer.

One thing to note is Cyberpower include a thermal label covering the rear fan output with a large QR core for setup instructions. Knowing people as I do, I can forsee potential issues with leaving this label here, and might be better suited over the rear IO to force users to remove it to use the system, or at least an additional “REMOVE BEFORE USE” warning at the bottom.

From the front the system is presented well. As you’d expect there aren’t any rookie errors here, the RAM is in the right slots, the GPU is well secured, the CPU cooler is mounted properly, and all the cables are dressed about as well as you can get with stock PSU cables. You certainly can opt for nicer looking PSU cables in their configurator if that matters to you.

From the back it’s just as well managed. The only thing I might note is that they’ve used plastic zipties, which while that means the cables are as neat as you could ever hope for, if you need to connect something else like an extra storage drive you’ll like need to very carefully cut some of the ties, rather than using something like velcro straps that can be more easily removed for future upgrades and changes. Either way it’s certainly clean back here.

Performance

Unsurprisingly with an 8 core CPU and AMD’s highest end GPU, this games incredibly well.

1080p Gaming	Average FPS	1% Low FPS
CS2 Low	696.8	199.6
Cyberpunk 2077 Medium	228.9	149.3
Shadow of the Tomb Raider High	277.5	160.5
Microsoft Flight Simulator Medium	122.3	72.0
Rainbow 6 Siege Medium	600.5	487.6
Hitman 3 Medium (CPU)	180.0	84.3
Starfield Low	143.2	104.6

Testing at 1080p, it’s clear this system is overqualified for the task. Netting 700 FPS in CS2, 600 FPS in Siege, and even 230 FPS in Cyberpunk is no mean feat. Realistically you’ll be gaming at 1440p – perhaps on my new favourite gaming monitor, the AOC AG276QZD2, a QD-OLED 240Hz 1440p 27 inch monitor that’s simply amazing. This has plenty of power to spare there. Pretty much any game, at any setting, you’re going to have a good time.

One thing I might suggest is to option up the CPU from the 9700X – a perfectly decent chip mind you – to the newer 9800X3D, as benchmarks suggest you’ll see quite a considerable performance uplift with that chip, all for £179 on this system. If you’ve got £2500 to spend on a system, trust me when I say it’s worth the extra.

Thoughts

This is an incredibly powerful system. It’ll handle anything you throw at it, and the joy of buying from a system’s integrator like Cyberpower is the easy customisation. If you want a 9800X3D, that’s one click. If you want to save a buck and get a slightly slower GPU, that’s a click. Want more storage? Just click it. It’s really easy, and for the most part there isn’t a huge mark-up on the system. By my reckoning there is maybe £100 – 150 on top of the components which really isn’t bad.

While I would option this up to a 9800X3D, even as it stands it’s a great machine, so I’m happy to award it the TechteamGB Gold Award.