AVADirect Silent Gaming PC: An Exercise in Balance

Conclusion: Mostly Solid, Mostly Sound

In their Silent Gaming PC, AVADirect has produced a reasonably balanced, powerful build that goes a large way towards proving a powerful system can still run quietly. While "silent" is a bit of a misnomer (even AVADirect uses "silent" and "low-noise" in the same sentence though these two terms do not mean the same thing), I have a hard time believing most users will be annoyed by the idle noise. Since gaming typically taxes the GPU far more than the CPU and the custom cooler on the GTX 580 runs incredibly quietly, gamers aren't going to have any complaints with AVADirect's build.

Where things go awry is with the processor. The i7-2700K is capable of being a quiet and efficient chip even under an overclock, but in this build the use of a manual voltage setting instead of an offset plays hell on idle power and heat, while the load noise of the heatsink/fan combo on the CPU is very noticeable and even irritating. I may be using a SilverStone FT02 as my personal enclosure, but if I can get a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ and a pair of Scythe fans to keep a 4GHz i7-990X both cool and quiet under maximum, sustained load, AVADirect should be able to get that i7-2700K under control.

When I brought that problem to AVADirect's attention, they suggested using the lowest overclock setting (4.5GHz) and then reducing the duty cycle on the CPU fans. Indeed, that wound up for the most part doing the trick, but then why wasn't this the default? You can hear the CPU fans spin up just a little, but the difference is negligible, and I'd be willing to sacrifice 100MHz on the processor to achieve silence.

I will say part of the acoustic issue lies with the NZXT H2. That's something the end user can fix, but the next problem is that the alternatives AVADirect does offer are either overpriced or bad. You can get Fractal Design's Define R3 (an awesome enclosure to be sure), but there's a $60 premium on it for an enclosure that's only $10 more in retail. For that there's a good reason: Fractal Design isn't directly sourcing to any OEMs yet, so while AVADirect can order H2s in bulk from NZXT, they have to buy Fractal Design retail just like the rest of us taxpaying ninjas. So why aren't they sourcing from Antec instead? Antec's P183 or P280 would both be preferable to the H2, and the P280 is only $30 more in retail than the H2. The P183 should be made available as an option, but it's not.

Of course, I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. The main strikes against AVADirect's Silent Gaming PC are what they almost always are with boutiques: a questionable case and a poorly-tuned overclock. In terms of value for money, AVADirect presents a more convincing argument. $2,200 is a lot, but most of the components are top of the line. While I think Puget Systems could probably beat AVADirect in terms of acoustics in relation to performance, a comparable system from them will tack $400 on to your end price, they won't overclock the CPU for you, and the one year warranty still sticks out like a sore thumb in a market where every other vendor has standardized on three. So while the load noise on the CPU under heavy stress is a black mark on an otherwise quiet build, AVADirect's outing ends up being a good one. Just don't buy one expecting true silence, as it's really more of a quiet gaming PC (which obviously isn't as marketable).