Cyberpower has a name for making fast, overclocked, high-end and, it must be said, expensive gaming systems, many using exotic features like watercooling.

But here's a gaming system at the other end of the spectrum: the Gamer Infinity Yang, a £550 Intel-based system (if you'd prefer an AMD-based system then there is the Gamer Infinity Ying for the same price). As with most Cyberpower systems it is fully customisable online, but if you are just starting out then either of the basic systems will be fine.

The Gamer Infinity Yang has at its heart an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 clocked at 2.33GHz with a 1333MHz FSB (the Ying has an overclocked, triple core AMD Phenom II X3 710 processor running at 3.1GHz), sitting in an MSI P31 Neo-F motherboard which uses Intel's P31/ICH7 chipset combination.

Backing this up is 4GB of G.Skill PC2-6400 DDR2 memory in the form of two 2GB modules, and while the motherboard may have four DIMM slots, it only supports a maximum of 4GB so if you want more performance from your Yang you'll need to look elsewhere. As its stands the performance isn't too shabby, though, scoring a pretty decent 8,270 in PCMark05.

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To keep the price of the Yang to its low level, Cyberpower has had to make some sacrifices when it comes to the graphics side of things, choosing an Nvidia GeForce 9600GT which comes with 512MB of dedicated memory.

While it's not powerful enough to run high frame rates with today's top games at high resolutions, by dropping down to 1,024 by 768 it will provide playable frame rates, as proved by its average score of 48fps in World in Conflict's built-in benchmark. What would be interesting to see is the performance of the Yang if Cyberpower used one of ATI's latest, huge-bang-for-your-buck Radeon HD4770 cards in place of the 9600GT.

For storage there is a 500GB, 7,200rpm Hitachi hard drive which some mind find a bit stingy considering the low cost of large capacity drives, but it's more than adequate to get you started, and anyway there is plenty of room in the case for you to add extra drives at a later date. The choice of optical drive is also helping to keep costs down: there's no Blu-ray drive but instead an arguably more useful Sony 20x Dual Format DVD burner.

Integrated into the motherboard are Gigabit Ethernet and eight channel audio but no speakers are bundled in with the system. You do get a 19-inch TFT monitor; a Hanon H-341WDB with a 1,440 by 900 pixel native resolution and pair of built-in speakers which are best ignored. Rounding off the hardware bundle is a Logitech keyboard and optical mouse.

With the Gamer Infinity Yang, Cyberpower has put together a good system for the price, which would make an ideal entry level gaming machine. But stick in an ATI Radeon HD4770 and it becomes a real wolf in sheep's clothing.