AVADirect wasn’t really a systems builder on our radar until late last year when we reviewed their Avant Mini Cube Gaming PC. After extensive testing, we found that the system was well configured, well built, and well priced, quickly propelling AVADirect to the top as one of our favorite custom PC builders.
Recently, AVADirect sent us another one of the systems in their lineup, the AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC, which as its name implies is AVADirect’s quiet gaming PC offering based on AMD’s X370 Ryzen platform.
AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC Specs Desktop AVADirect X370 Quiet Gaming PC Case Phanteks Eclipse [...]One of the most important pieces of software to have in any PC is some sort of hardware or system monitoring tool. While many think this is only necessary for overclockers who push their hardware to the absolute limits, it’s really not. I simply can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people ask me why their computer is running so slow or why their laptop is shutting down randomly because they had no idea that a fan died in their system and the system was overheating.
Lucky for you, this won’t happen to you because you’ll have a hardware monitoring tool which will help you diagnose any problems before handing your computer over to a [...]
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 [...]
When Intel launched the Broadwell-E platform earlier this year, Intel’s X99 chipset saw a surge in interest as many users became interested in upgrading their systems which required a suitable motherboard to match. Today we have an X99 platform motherboard that sits at below the $250 pricepoint and has the features to keep up with most users needs.
Today we’ll be reviewing the Gigabyte X99P SLI which is a motherboard that falls into the $200 range with a fairly extensive list of features making it quite competitive on paper.
The original X99 SLI motherboard from Gigabyte was priced at the $200 price point but [...]
As a PC owner, one of the most important things to know is the manufacturer, model and BIOS version of the motherboard you have in your system. This is one of the first questions I ask people when they ask me if they can upgrade their system or when they ask me for help because something isn’t working correctly. The motherboard is the one piece of hardware in your system that interconnects everything else so any hardware upgrades will need to be compatible with the motherboard. Depending on the motherboard manufacturer and how active they are on updates, the motherboard’s internal software, or BIOS/UEFI, also needs to be upgrade to support newer [...]
Several years ago, we reviewed the Patriot Viper 3 which was a great memory kit with aggressive styling, good performance, and a reasonable cost. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of DDR4 alongside several new platforms which support the new memory including Intel’s Skylake and Broadwell-E platforms.
The switch to DDR4 brings on several new features, the most notable benefit is that DDR4 dies are expected to be significantly higher density than DDR3, allowing manufacturer to achieve higher capacities per DIMM. DDR4 also operates at higher frequencies yet requires lower operating voltages paving way for higher performance [...]
NVIDIA’s next-generation Pascal architecture is finally being released to consumers this Friday, in the form of the GTX 1080. While NVIDIA’s new king does pack quite an impressive punch, many enthusiasts are still greatly anticipating the release of NVIDIA’s highest-end gaming graphics cards, the possible GTX 1080 Ti and new Titan.
Historically, NVIDIA would release only one “Big” chip, usually with the code-named Gx100 (with x standing in for the first letter of the name of the architecture), however, there’s been quite a few rumors recently surrounding a possible second “Big Pascal” chip, which will serve as a [...]
Noctua prides itself on creating products of the utmost quality. Love or hate their signature brown and beige color scheme, it has easily become synonymous with quality, innovation and most of all: silence. Naturally, when you have such high success, it becomes easier to remain complacent and just coast off your already great designs. But, that isn’t what Noctua has done. Instead, they’re constantly iterating and improving upon its existing designs in order to push even higher performance, compatibility, and the overall user experience.
Today we’re taking a look at a pair of coolers which perfectly display that mentality. [...]
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 [...]
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