V3 Gaming PC Avenger Review: A New Challenger Appears
by Dustin Sklavos on May 16, 2012 2:20 AM ESTBuild, Heat, and Power Consumption
A good boutique build really does start at the enclosure. While the NZXT cases most commonly used by boutiques aren't necessarily terrible, there's still something left to be desired when better options are available. Corsair as a brand seems to be picking up popularity with boutiques, though, and while it's probably a bit more expensive for all involved, their cases are generally a step up.
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Boutique builds are usually very clean, but a case like the Carbide 500R can make it that much easier to both build and service the system. Unfortunately the beefy Asetek radiator winds up mucking things up a bit; while it gets the job done (which you'll see in a bit), it also effectively blocks the end user from two empty RAM slots, making building up the system more difficult.
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V3 does a decent job of keeping cable clutter to a minimum too, but by employing a non-modular power supply they're forced to stash the excess cables under the drive trays. The TX750 V2 is an excellent power supply, but a modular 80 Plus Gold unit might have been a nice touch (though it would've driven the cost up).
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Finally, I do like the nice bit of branding that V3 does with the enclosure. The V3 logos on the front and the sides help to give the system more identity and make it feel a bit like less of an off-the-shelf assembly of hardware.
As it turns out, though, cooling isn't much of an issue for the Avenger, despite the high core voltage. We already knew the GTX 680 was an efficient piece of kit, but the i7-3820 is actually fairly frugal as well in terms of both heat and power. The Avenger remains relatively quiet even under load, making it an excellent choice for a workstation.
I'll admit I was concerned about power consumption with the Avenger. The MSI motherboard employed doesn't allow for setting an offset voltage, but the i7-3820 seems to be idling just fine. Load consumption is excellent as well given the high overclock on the processor. It's not the most frugal system in the world, but V3's build isn't aggressively sucking power out of the wall under stress either.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
As an evaluation unit, the manufacturer ships us whatever they feel best represents their product. Obviously, we're not going to be upgrading it to 32GB RAM or more during the review process, so it doesn't really affect the review. If you're custom ordering a system and select 32GB RAM, hopefully they're good enough to let customers know that you'll need Win7 Pro/Ultimate to utilize the additional memory.DanNeely - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
More to the point, their cart will let you buy 32GB of ram and W7 Home without as much as a single warning....ggathagan - Friday, May 18, 2012 - link
This is a review of a system, as opposed to a review of a vendor's purchasing process, so I'm not sure why the latter is being discussed.Unless you actually purchased a system from them with 32GB and W7 home, you've no idea whether or not such a combination would trigger a warning message or a follow-up email from the company regarding the mismatch.
zlandar - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
I have this case for my own DIY build and love it. Very easy to install components and not too large. Little touches like case screws that remain attached to the side panel make a big difference. I normally buy black cases but the white is fine.Puzzled why V3 would not use a 240mm radiator to take advantage of the case. I have a H100 and it sits out of the way in the built-in slot in the 500R.
Also a raid 0 ssd setup is a bad idea. I use a ssd plus hard drives with no raid.
jigglywiggly - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
i love the look of that casedtolios - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
...makes sense only to have options for upgrading the base format...it gives you more options than an i7 LGA1155, were you've hit the ceiling with the 3770K and more or less 2x GPUs...But with the base price of this configuration exceeding a similar or better spec "home assembled" system by more than $600 (even with a 1000W PSU should you want to go for 2 or more GPUs and O/C a 6 core with more head room etc), I cannot help myself but being afraid of what they would ask once you've started tweaking those customization options...
I understand that they need to make a profit, but...still it's too much for something that is put together with mainstream components using marketing tricks in order to appeal to a half-educated crowd. (i.e. UN-needed RAID, poor O/C optimization etc)
hapsr - Thursday, May 17, 2012 - link
Keep them to yourself, this is a big boy gamer systems, not a PS3 lol. It just that u don't have the money so please keep window shopping Cheap one lol..oopyseohs - Thursday, May 17, 2012 - link
The machine looks very balanced to me. I consider a balanced machine to be one that doesn't have a clear bottleneck or one component or components that are way too good for the rest of the system. If you look at it that way, it is very balanced (not a ridiculous hex-core processor, single 680 instead of 3, SSDs, etc). It's probably not ideal for a strictly "gaming" computer since you could get an amazing one of those for probably around 1500. Don't know if v3 said anything to dustin about it being specifically for gaming or not thoughI priced everything out on newegg and it comes out to around $1950 (not exact because some stuff is not in stock), so when you consider that they do all the work for you and offer technical support which seems good based on customer reviews online and warranties, it's not too bad of a deal compared with some other manufacturers.
IVB might be a better choice for a configuration that is like this, but I think the review mentioned that this is a much more flexible platform, meaning greater headroom (X79 has a lot more upgrade options/ potential). That makes sense for the "top" model that the company offers. The i7-3820 and a decent X79 board really is not that much more expensive (if at all) than an i7-3770K + decent MB, and it probably runs cooler and overclocks a little better actually.
The only things I would change in this build would probably be the SSDs to a single SSD, and 8GB of memory because I would never use 16. lastly, I have seen the white 500R in person and it looks a lot better than it does in the pictures, not sure why. IMO it is pretty good looking. totally defending v3 in this post lol.
Craig234 - Thursday, May 17, 2012 - link
Did you mean "nebulous" or "dubious"? Nebulous doesn't make sense.shumicpi - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - link
The configuration is very good but the price not :(shumi
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