iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate: AMD Gaming PC

Name: iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate
Brand: iBuypower

by Joshua Gulick — Friday, November 29, 2013, 12:00 PM EDT

Although power consumption isn’t likely to be a make or break decision for you when buying a system, it doesn’t hurt to know what the system will be pulling from you outlet – particularly because the power draw varies so widely from one line of PCs to the next. We test each review PC by measuring its power draw (at the outlet) when idle, and then again when under load with Prime95 and FurMark running full steam.

The iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate has moderate draw at idle, but pulled 637 Watts under load, which is much higher than you'll see with similarly configured Intel-based systems. Even so, the draw is well under what the 1000W power supply unit is rated to handle.

The Chimera can be quite noisy when you have the fans running at full blast, as you likely will when overclocking and gaming, but the noise isn’t anything a good pair of headphones can’t tamp down. And if you want the system to run quietly, all you need to do is slide that fan control at the top.

Tags: AMD, Corsair, IBuyPower, Powercolor, G.Skill, Radeon HD, ASRock, 7970, 9590

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.