The CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 8500 offers a great price-to-performance ratio, keeping up with the best and brightest of theperformance desktop category at a price that undercuts most of the pack. It might not top the charts, but for a respectable $1499 (as of November 4, 2010), it doesn't really need to. It shines as a great option for someone on a limited budget who is looking for a well-equipped machine.

The Gamer Xtreme 8500 we reviewed was equipped with a 2.93GHz Core i7-875K CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and a pair of nVidia GTS 450 graphics cards in SLI. It earned a WorldBench 6 score of 155. That mark puts it well behind its heftier cousin, the CyberPower Black Pearl (with a score of 171), as well as behind Digital Storm's Black Ops Assassin (with a mark of 172). But it also doesn't share those systems' price tags.