Syber was not the first to announce a new PC gaming console designed to disrupt the console gaming space, and it certainly won’t be the last. The Syber Vapor is a Windows based gaming system that is expected to be available to consumers later this month. Syber has delivered a system that they believe will be the console alternative of choice for gamers.
Since the initial announcements in January at CES, the PC gaming console market has been clearly divided into two clear camps. In the first camp we have the moderate-performance, moderately-priced, and mostly non-upgradable consoles, and in the second camp we have the high-performance, high-priced, and fully-upgradable consoles; which are basically compact desktop systems running Steam OS.
While competing companies have produced systems that resemble the traditional console size, design and performance, Syber is positioned right in the middle between the two camps by being both small in size and big in performance with the added flexibility of being fully upgradable like a tradition PC gaming system.
The entry level Syber PC gaming console model is the Vapor-A that starts at $599, comes with a 3.2 GHz AMD Athlon X4 840, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive and a AMD Radeon R9 270 GPU. The extreme model is the Vapor-X, priced at $1499 which will include a 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive and the newly released Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU.
The Vapor console is slightly larger than its lower-performance competitors, however it is priced competitively, has substantially higher-performance, and is upgradable. The key feature that Syber believes gamers will want is that it will be the only system in this price point that is truly upgradable from top to bottom.
“It was a huge challenge to stay true to the console expectations of being small and compact, but we wanted to give gamers a system that would be able to play every game on the market today with high settings. It is a part of our promise to our customers to deliver the best gaming experience possible at an excellent value. As our mantra states, our mission is to give gamers the Power to Play.” says Syber’s chief product manager Eddie Vong. He continues, “I think what we’ve produced here is a system that will outperform our competitors and out grow them by years, which is the kind of upgrade flexibility we know gamers will appreciate.”
Of the current systems on the market, many remain fairly limited in terms of upgradability, offering only minor options such as memory and hard drive storage. On the other hand, the Vapor gaming systems will allow owners to upgrade everything from the motherboard to the graphics card; and not just any graphics card but a full-size, dual-slot GPU – ensuring that even the next generation’s top of the line graphics cards will fit with ease.
This standardized component compatibility allows Syber to offer full system customization directly from their website at www.sybergaming.com. Gamers can custom configure any option for their Syber Vapor system build. This gives gamers total control over the performance and price of their new PC gaming consoles, rather than being forced into a limited proprietary system.
Based on the specifications of the Vapor models, it looks like they will be able to outperform similarly priced systems while still being fairly comparable to most moderate desktop gaming pcs. The only difference will be that it can fit into an ordinary backpack and on a living room shelf.
Whether performance and upgradability will be the deciding factors for gamers is yet to be seen, but Syber certainly has a strong contender in the market and is sure to give its competitors a run for their money.