When it comes to gaming on the PC it can be quite overwhelming as there are a few routes to go. You can get a gaming PC from any one of the major manufacturers out there however, you are usually getting something off the shelf and not tailored to your own needs. There are a few companies that allow you to build your own PC but, some of the websites are confusing and do not explain all the options. Recently I found a company called CyberPowerPC and I wanted to learn more about it so I reached out to the company and they had this to say:
TR: Please introduce yourself.
NH: My name is Nam Hoang and I’m the Brand Manager here at CyberPowerPC.
TR: How was CyberPowerPC founded?
NH: CyberPowerPC was founded back in 1998 by our current CEO Eric Cheung and our current President Stanley Ho. Both of them had worked in the computer manufacturing industry for some time when they decided to partner up to create a computer brand of their own. At the time, there was already a growing demand for gaming PCs and many of the top brands in gaming we know today were founded between 1996 and 1999. CyberPowerPC saw this opportunity and became among the first to lead the way.
While most of the world at the time probably couldn’t have imagined PC gaming becoming the massive industry it is today, let alone the viability of eSports, the few that did including CyberPowerPC had no doubts about the future of gaming. Like most brands in that day, CyberPowerPC started off small with a website that sold PCs online, but what made CyberPowerPC unique from others at the time was our large selection of components that customers could use to configure a custom system to their exact specifications. This was the key differentiator from other brands which either offered pre-built fixed configurations or limited customization.
This was especially important since during the late 90s many new unknown Asian component brands were being introduced who brought along with them new and unique designs for their chassis, graphics cards and more. These brands were relatively unknown to the average customer but were highly coveted among gamers because they allowed gamers to truly personalize their computers inside and out. It was a time when unknown brands such as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte and ACER were found mostly on the tables of obscure computer fairs or hole in the wall computer shops, yet CyberPowerPC became one of the few reliable sources for these brands.
TR: What are some of the core values behind the products you offer?
NH: CyberPowerPC’s vision is to have a CyberPowerPC gaming computer in every home, and while at one time that seemed like a distant dream, today it is very close to becoming reality. At our core CyberPowerPC simply wants people to enjoy gaming. So to achieve this, our products must provide great performance and dependability at a great value.
Finding the optimal balance between these three factors takes a tremendous amount of effort which we work tirelessly to achieve every day. Some brands might offer a handful of GPU options but the fact that we offer at times over 50 different GPUs makes it exponentially more challenging. We have to test them across an equally long list of CPUs, motherboards, and memory. However, having this wide offering is what makes the builds that our customers configure more transparent than other manufacturers. You know exactly what you are getting and we help as best as we can to set their expectations of performance, dependability, and value by informing them about the configurations they have chosen as well as providing customers with our own recommended configurations.
TR: What are some of the products you can get from CyberPowerPC?
NH: CyberPowerPC’s core products are desktop and laptop gaming PCs which you can customize and purchase from CyberPowerPC.com. We also offer pre-built systems at any of our retail partners which include Amazon or Best Buy to name a few. What differentiates CyberPowerPC’s custom configuration from our pre-built systems is that level of customization that can be applied which can vary from a simple build to something as complex as a full custom liquid cooling system with hard or soft tubing.
CyberPowerPC is also now offering more unique series based on different solutions categories. For example, CyberPowerPC recently partnered with Elgato and Corsair to introduce the CyberPowerPC Elgato Stream Machine series of computers, which offers four tiers of gaming computers for different performance needs and budget constraints. The goal is to have some no-nonsense options that fit all needs from a new startup influencer all they way up to professional career streamers.
CyberPowerPC also has a subsidiary brand called Syber Gaming which manufactures and designs original products such as PC chassis, keyboards, mice and more. These are also available and configurable through CyberPowerPC.com or at other retails. However, in the near future, you can also expect CyberPowerPC to bring to market CyberPowerPC branded gaming accessories and hardware.
TR: I hear rumors about other builders offering inferior / not genuine parts in their builds. What do you think about this?
NH: The idea of offering inferior or not genuine parts for us is unfathomable and we certainly hope other builders are not selling computers with those components to uninformed customers. In fact, it’s hard to believe that knock-off components even exist in the market today, to be honest. Here at CyberPowerPC we only use genuine components and every brand we carry is either a well-recognized brand or a quality value brand that we’ve worked with for many years and we can back their quality. Obviously, there will be quality and performance differences between top brands and value brands and we give the customer the freedom to choose their balance between quality and budget. However, even our value brand components have been rigorously tested to ensure they meet our quality standards. If a customer is ever unsure if they are buying a genuine CyberPowerPC from another retailer, they should always contact us first to verify before buying.
If we could make one note about inferior components and the computing industry in general, it would be to say that we’ve seen top award-winning component brands offer products with defects just as often as we’ve seen unknown value brands perform surprisingly well beyond our expectations. The point here is that a customer should do some research on their own about which specific components they are interested in by checking out reviews for the individual components or to ask around to friends who might offer insight and experience.
Lastly is that there is a distinction between inferior components and incompatible components, and customers have often mistaken incompatibility with inferiority. Components today are so complex, and the combinations add an even greater level of complexity. Components that could work perfectly fine one day, could be incompatible the next day simply because of an innocent software or firmware update. Identifying and resolving these unexpected occurrences takes time and the problems of one component can cause a cascade of problems throughout the computer. The added value in purchasing from CyberPowerPC is that we work closely with all our component manufacturers to test hundreds of combinations and often can identify and help resolve these incompatibility issues quicker than others.
TR: There are different tiers of desktop PC’s on your site. Can you explain the difference between them (esports, syber, etc)?
NH: In general, nearly any computer that a customer wants to build can be customized on CyberPowerPC.com. The sky is the limit, however, we do have base configurations which serve as a starting point to take out the guesswork for many customers. These base configurations allow customers to compare the FPS differences at a glance and once they’ve picked a base configuration, they can then upgrade it or downgrade it to meet their needs. We have also categorized these base configurations based on different unique features. For example, our Hyper Liquid Series are custom liquid cooling systems, while our esports series computers are the actual configurations used by our sponsored esports teams and influencers. Additionally, if you are in a rush to get a computer quickly, our Instant Ship Systems are our most popular configurations and they are already built and ready to ship in a day or two, as opposed to the typical 1 to 2 weeks it might take for a custom built computer.
TR: Are you able to customize your system on the website and how easy is it to do so?
NH: CyberPowerPC.com is probably the most flexible customization website around with more component options than any other brand. However, this always adds a greater level of complexity for the average consumer who doesn’t know the differences between individual components. Picking parts is obviously easy on our website but understanding the difference between good choices from better choices is something the customer can either ask us or they can do with their own research. We do our best to offer a wide selection of base configurations that we think are the best options at different price ranges.
TR: You also offer laptops as well however, are these suitable for gaming?
NH: Our laptops are absolutely suitable for gaming however there are so many levels of what we consider gaming, from casual mainstream gaming to hardcore professional esports. The first thing to keep in mind is that the best gaming laptop can never outperform a desktop with better components, that is just a fact. However, there certainly are laptops that are just as comparable to a high-end desktop in performance, for example, our Tracer III series of laptops which offer as high as an Intel I7-9750H CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU which is almost comparable to its desktop counterpart. Laptops will always sacrifice performance for portability so it comes down to what a customer is willing to trade. If you absolutely need portability then a gaming laptop can certainly perform as well as a desktop with a substantially higher cost for the same performance. However, if you don’t need portability at all, then a desktop will always be the better value.
TR: What are some of the deals you have going on right now?
NH: CyberPowerPC.com is always running deals every day with upwards of 100 individual component deals. They can vary from free component upgrades to instant rebates to exclusive discounts on select configurations. The best way to find them is to visit our website and check out our “Weekly Special” section. There are also deals going on at any given time for CyberPowerPCs at major retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg to name a few. The one thing you can be sure of and the most important thing to keep in mind is that the everyday price of our systems will more often than not be lower the cost it would be to buy all the parts and build it yourself. That is one thing we are certain of so we always encourage people to compare our builds to the same configuration PCPartPicker.com to see for yourself. The benefit of buying from CyberPowerPC is that you’ll get a warranty for the entire system, you’ll have tech support available to you and you can rely on us to handle repairs and servicing if needed.
TR: And what if someone has a problem with your product how easy is it to get an RMA?
NH: If a customer has any problem with their system, they just have to call us up, email us or chat with us and we’ll help them out as best we can. Of course, we’ll always try to troubleshoot the problem if they’ll allow us to, however, if they are certain they want to return the product then they have 30 days from the date it was shipped to request an RMA. One of the biggest issues customers have had in the past was the cost of shipping their computers back to CyberPowerPC for returns so recently we started offering a discounted return shipping label provided by us, to make this not only cheaper but easier for CyberPowerPC customers. Additionally, we charge no other restocking fee. We want to make sure you are absolutely happy with your purchase and we want to keep you as a customer so if you aren’t 100% happy, simply request an RMA for return, and we’ll gladly help you out quickly and easily.
TR: So if someone is ready to take the plunge what’s the best way to get started?
NH: If they have decided on getting a CyberPowerPC then great, the first question would be how familiar they are with gaming computers? Do they know what games they want to play? Do they know what their budget is? If they know all these things, then simply go to CyberPowerPC.com and pick any computer with the core components they are looking for and start customizing from there. However, if they are less familiar with gaming computers, they can check out our all-new EZ Configurator which is a simple guide that helps them find the best computers based on that same criterion above. You can find the EZ Configurator by visiting the Instant Ship Systems section of our website to get started. If they still aren’t sure if CyberPowerPC is the right brand for them, we suggest they do some research on their own and check out what customers have to say about CyberPowerPC on retail websites such as Amazon or Best Buy. CyberPowerPC has been voted 2 times in a row in 2016 and 2018 for the PCMag.com reader’s choice for best gaming desktop across multiple categories including quality, value, and service, so they can have trust in what they are buying and who they are buying it from.
TR: Anything else you’d like to add?
NH: There was a time when building your own computer was the best way to get the most performance for your money, however, those times are gone. The competition among component brands is fierce and the options abundant while simultaneously, the cost of a computer has gone down significantly in comparison to performance. It simply doesn’t make sense anymore to build a computer yourself or even upgrade in many cases. Often a 2-year-old computer is not only more cost effective to replace than upgrading your computer but it’ll provide a substantial performance boost and fewer compatibility issues. Gaming computers these days can offer major performance increases over the previous generation at a price that is less than a typical high-end cellular phone. When is the last time someone considered upgrading components on their $1000 cell phone? It just simply doesn’t make sense and it’s something that still isn’t considered by most customers today who are thinking of building their own computer.
And there you have it folks! If you are interested in taking the plunge and designing your own PC from scratch please visit https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ and get ready to experience the future in gaming.
