Syber Vapor K review

With the impending arrival of Steam Machines, the living room has suddenly become the heated new battleground for PC manufacturers as everyone attempts to fit powerful PC components into tinier cases. The Syber gaming brand is an off-shoot from Cyberpower that focuses purely on this living room PC console-like experience.

While the tiny Alienware Alpha is undeniably a console-sized gaming PC, the same can’t be said of the Vapor K unless you’re referring to the era of the original Xbox. It’s certainly smaller than your typical mid-tower gaming PC, but will still take up a rather large amount of space underneath your TV.

The 351x345x98.5mm chassis has an overall shape that does somewhat hark back to the original Xbox. There’s an exposed fan exhaust with no filter on the top that concerns us slightly, as dust has the potential to get inside when it’s turned off. There are a few other minor design issues as well, such as the upside down USB ports on the front.

The Vapor K is available in either white or black but you can customise it using a discrete button on the side, which cycles the strip of LEDs running along the front of the system between different colours. One of the settings turns the lighting off completely, which will be useful if you find them distracting.

Syber has several different Vapor configurations with differing base specifications you can then customise. Prices range from between £499 up to £1,249 and each version is given its own unique name. The model we reviewed, the Vapor K, is available for £999, which makes it more expensive than even the top-end Alienware Alpha.

The larger case does bring with it some benefits, however; namely a more powerful graphics card. While the Alpha used a graphics card based on a notebook GPU, the Vapor K is able to accommodate a proper desktop card in the form of an Nvidia GTX 970 with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. A desktop class Intel i5-4690K processor running at 3.5GHz is also used, along with 8GB of memory and a 2½in 1TB hard disk.

Performance in our desktop application benchmark was slightly above what we would expect given the components, scoring 105 overall and making the Syber Vapor K a decent choice for tasks beyond living room gaming.

If you’re looking for a system that will give current generation games consoles a run for their money, the Vapor K did well here, too. Dirt Showdown at 1080p saw 112.8fps with Ultra graphics and 4x anti-aliasing. Tomb Raider also saw a silky 64.9fps with 2x SSAA and Ultimate level of graphics quality. In Metro Last Light Redux the system produced 45.3fps with SSAA turned on, with this increasing to 77fps with SSAA turned off. The GTX 970 was unsurprisingly an excellent performer.

While gaming and under load, however, the system is reasonably noisy with the fans spinning up to high speeds to keep the components cool. The chassis also becomes particularly warm to the touch, so you’ll need to make sure there is adequate ventilation if you put the machine in an AV cabinet.

Opening up the Vapor K for upgrades is pleasingly simple. There’s just a single screw hidden behind a pop-off cap, which then allows you to slide off the top cover. Both memory slots come occupied but you can easily swap these out if you want to install up to 16GB of memory. The hard disk is mounted to a removable metal plate that also has a 120mm fan attached. This is installed over the graphics card, so will need to be removed first if you want to swap the graphics card out.

There’s a good array of connectivity including a headphone and microphone port on the front of the system, something the Alienware Alpha lacks. In addition to the front USBs, there are a further four USB3 ports and two standard USBs on the rear, along with two Ethernet ports and connections for an external Gigabyte 802.11ac Wi-Fi antenna. There are audio connections for up to 7.1 surround and an optical S/PDIF connection. Finally, the graphics card has HDMI, DisplayPort and two DVI outputs.

The Syber Vapor K is designed as a living room PC, so installing Steam and using Big Picture mode to easily navigate your gaming library using a controller is a must. Our system was set to auto-start Steam in Big Picture mode as soon as Windows booted, but this is something you can disable if you prefer to boot into a conventional desktop.

The Vapor K comes with a Logitech F710 wireless gaming controller that is an amalgamation of the PlayStation and Xbox style controller. The twin analogue sticks are positioned much like the PlayStation’s but the face buttons use the distinct Xbox colours and labels. The F710 isn’t our favourite controller to use, the triggers in particular don’t feel as responsive as we would like. We would have preferred if Syber had included an Xbox 360 controller and wireless adaptor instead.

The wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad that also comes bundled with the system is no larger than a smartphone. The keyboard’s keys are tiny but do a decent job as an alternative to reaching for a full-size keyboard if you’re on the couch. The touchpad was also surprisingly serviceable. It’s a welcome inclusion, but not something we would want to use for long periods of time.

The Vapor K is a competent gaming PC in a reasonably compact form factor. It’s no where near as small and innocuous as the Alienware Alpha but makes up for it by being eminently more powerful and more easily upgradeable. It runs a little hot and noisy for our liking, but overall it’s a fine choice if you want a living room PC without compromise.