AVADirect Deluxe Quiet Gaming Desktop PC Review
by Dustin Sklavos on February 23, 2014 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: Overall Strong, But Needs Refinement
AVADirect actually did a pretty solid job on this build. This is the third iteration of their quiet gaming PC that I've tested and the best of the three, and that's not just owing to the progress of the underlying hardware. The NZXT H630 is a night and day improvement over the old NZXT H2 and goes a long way towards doing justice to the efforts of the engineers behind the build.
What AVADirect needs now is to streamline it. The rubber fan mounts have to go, and with that, a serious re-evaluation of their shipping methods. I've long bemoaned their stuff as being overpacked: the case box, packed inside a larger box, surrounded by packing peanuts, because AVADirect is trying to kill my cats. The only SI that makes shipment more of a nuisance is Origin and their giant wooden crates. The fact that this overprotective shipping method still failed to keep the fans in their mounts (ignoring the general flimsiness of rubber fan mounts) suggests to me that the only thing stopping it from being overkill is that it's just not very good at its job.
The BitFenix Recon is also essentially unnecessary in this build. I suspect the fans are overkill, but I'm not going to complain since the system is so quiet anyhow and it's not like too much airflow ever killed a system. I'd revise the cooling system by replacing the Recon with in-line resistors and replacing the Zalman Cube with a 140mm closed loop liquid cooler, using two 140mm fans sandwiching the radiator and running at ~5V.
Finally, I think we're about ready to kill the mechanical storage entirely. The silencing enclosure for it is a nice touch if you must have mechanical storage, but it's not something I would go for in my primary system. That said, I do actually applaud AVADirect for opting not to include an optical drive. I barely use the one in my desktop, and it's easy enough to just get a USB one to plug in when you need it.
If it wasn't for the shipping snafus and slight overengineering of the interior, I'd say this is unequivocally the best quiet gaming machine AVADirect has sent us yet. They've done a fine job engineering it, now they just need to refine and streamline. I can't harp on the overabundance of part selection on their site; that's their business model and at this point unique to them. They just need to harness that abundance perfectly, and with this system, they're very close.
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DominionSeraph - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
Sorry, I can't agree that an additional 240GB in SSD (to 480GB) is an adequate replacement for a 2TB drive. Windows is going to take up ~20GB. There are people with Skyrim installs of over 100GB. BF4 calls for 30GB. WoW is over 20GB.A $2500 gaming system should have room for more than a handful of games.
teiglin - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
If I were building a >$2000 gaming PC today, I would definitely go with a 1TB SSD rather than any mechanical storage. I think you're right that trying to live in a single <500GB SSD could be pretty constricting, especially if you are trying to keep a 15-20% buffer of free space--on a 480GB SSD, that's around 300GiB of useable space for games, which might be fine if you're willing to uninstall old games, but if you are more of a packrat like me the it will probably be tough.I still have about 6TB of hard drives in my primary PC because it also serves as media storage for my entire house, freeing up my HTPCs to have a single small SSD, but anything that's not video deserves to go on flash.
will54 - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I agree with you there. We aren't at the point where it makes sense to get rid of hdd for mass storage. Get rid of the two smaller drives and start out with a 500gb or 1tb Samsung 840 and than add some hdd storage at a later date. Theres no reason to have everything on an ssd when a hdd is so much cheaper per GB.tim851 - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
Once you drop mechanical storage, a gargantuan case like the NZXT becomes ridiculous. Look a the inside pics. Empty hdd bays, a full ATX board with a single card. And at least two fans have been weirdly positioned just to deflect outside airflow to the components who need it.Build this thing inside a Node 304 and it will not be any louder, but about a tenth of the volume and much more awesome. Get a Silverstone ST55F-G with the complementary short cable kit and it becomes actually easier to build than this monstrosity here.
schizoide - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I completely agree and was just coming here to post that. That case is ridiculously large for 2014. Who needs that much space?Agree about those two angled fans too. Overengineered is spot-on.
Grok42 - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I couldn't agree more. It's all about small size and silence these days.Sunday Afternoon - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
Hmmm: the picture on the front page is distorted to make the proportions of the case appear very different.LtGoonRush - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I'm really disappointed with the poor component choices in this build, especially the motherboard, memory, and storage. They built a $2500 system around the *cheapest Z87 motherboard Asus makes*, which results in a very poorly balanced system due to the low quality integrated peripherals like audio and Ethernet. Using four DIMMs is the kind of amateurish mistake you see in people's first builds, it's not a big deal (unless you want to upgrade or run at high RAM clocks) but it's obviously wrong so should never happen in a machine designed by a professional. Finally, not only did they combine two small, slow system drives in a RAID0 array, but they used some of the least reliable drives on the market. This isn't opinion or anecdote, the Kingston HyperX 3K drives use low quality NAND (see TechReport SSD endurance tests to support this) and their observed failure rate (for 120GB models specifically) in the market is >5X comparable drives from Intel and Samsung (see Hardware.FR statistics for October 2013).It's 2014, we shouldn't have to shame boutique system builders into making decent component choices. I'm not asking anything unreasonable here or expensive here, a pair of 8GB DIMMs, a single 250GB Samsung 840 Evo, and bump the motherboard up to something appropriate. At the end of the day this system would not deliver the experience a customer should expect from a $2500 gaming machine, at a minimum because the integrated audio is so bad. If this is what they send out for review to show off their prowess, what ends up in the hands of their customers?
chrnochime - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
Ready to kill mechanical storage? You've got to be kidding me. Even the cheapest HDD these days still has longer MTBF than the best consumer SSD.Grok42 - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
Can you provide any proof of this? Everything I've read says that SSD wins hands down on MTBF. They also win for power, noise, heat and shock resistance. The only downside I'm aware of is price per MB. I don't think I'll ever buy an HDD again.