AVADirect is a boutique system builder with its origins in the suburbs of Cleveland Ohio. It’s probably not one of the first names that pop into your head as a system builder, but they’ve been making everything from gaming to business systems for over a decade.

Recently, AVADirect launched their Avant Mini Cube Gaming PC which is exciting because it’s based on Corsair’s excellent Carbide 240 Air PC case. Despite the relatively small size of the mATX formfactor case, AVADirect managed to fully kit it out with an overclocked Intel Core i7-6700K and GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition. Given how much we love big [...]

Back at CES earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to meet a couple guys from the iBUYPOWER team who were very excited to talk to us about their new SpecOps Program, a new initiative started by their R&D and marketing staff to help customers choose optimal system configurations for specific use cases. If anyone has ever purchased a system from a boutique vendor like iBUYPOWER, you’ll know that you don’t get much guidance in terms of parts selection. You simply go into the system configurator, do your research, and choose your own parts. The SpecOps Program however, helps guide customers through this process in a transparent [...]

Way back at CES 2014, Valve made a huge splash at the show announcing their intent to popularize PC gaming in the living room. In order to do this, Valve was building a custom Steam OS which would either be installed by an end user to their own gaming PC, or be bundled with Steam Machines – Valve approved gaming PCs manufactured by their PC OEM partners.

While Valve and their PC OEM partners created a lot of hype during the show, the Steam Machine concept has pretty much fizzled out in the past year as Steam have made no big announcements regarding the status of their Steam OS or Steam Machines. With PC OEMs already having dumped [...]

It’s really no secret that I love building my own PCs and it’s quite rare that you’d see me buy a pre-fab desktop. For me, there’s simply no value add in ordering a custom PC built with off the shelf parts I can easily put together myself. However, there are some system builders who’ve found ways to provide value add for enthusiasts such as myself by developing stuff like exclusive components or enhanced warranties that are far superior in comparison to the ones offered by PC component manufacturers.

Today we’ll be reviewing the CyberPowerPC Zeus Mini-I 780, which is a brand new system from [...]

You know, after reviewing a number of CyberPowerPC systems, I’ve always wondered how some of their naming schemes work. I mean, with a name comprised of badass sounding greek gods, natural disasters, adjectives, and numbers combined to form a single name that makes almost no sense, but sounds ridiculously awesome, it almost makes you wonder where the heck they come up with all these names.

Now, you’re probably asking why I’m even talking about CyberPowerPC’s system naming scheme. Well, that’s because today we’ll be reviewing a brand new system from CyberPowerPC, which [...]

Here at Custom PC Review, we generally don’t do too many reviews on pre-built systems. I’m a huge proponent of doing my own custom builds, but it’s understandable that not everyone has the time to spend building new systems and having the knowledge of building your own systems sometimes does come at a price – especially when all of your friends discover how much cheaper it is when you build a system for them (and invariably the issue of you becoming free tech support as soon as the system has any issues).

This is why today we’ll be reviewing a pre-built system from boutique PC builder, CyberPowerPC. While [...]

The supremacy a HTPC has over a DVD/CD player or a cablebox is evident. Being capable of extending its use beyond simply playing disks, more and more people are leaning towards HTPCs as the center of their home entertainment systems. Today, we’ll be taking a look at one such HTPC designed for just that purpose, the ARCTIC MC101 “Most Advanced Home Entertainment Centers“.

When ARCTIC first announced the MC101, I was extremely excited for the new product. It had a beautiful brushed aluminum design that I haven’t seen on any other device in the same class and even looked better in comparison to most [...]