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Steiger Dynamics Maven Pure Custom PC Review: Game In Silence

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  • Desktops
  • Tom's Hardware Top Picks
  • Home Theatre
  • Media Center
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September 30, 2014 12:00:13 AM

Steiger Dynamics builds ultra-quiet systems that can do-it-all from the living room. The Maven Pure Custom could be the answer to all of your home-theater needs, but are you really ready to ask the question?

Steiger Dynamics Maven Pure Custom PC Review: Game In Silence : Read more

More about : steiger dynamics maven pure custom review game silence

September 30, 2014 12:47:38 AM

Did I miss the price on this?
"The price for this machine is only $330 over the self-built option, with us using the closest-matching $400 OrigenAE case. If you subtract the $49 overclock fee and $99 cable service, Steiger only has about $189 in mark-up."
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September 30, 2014 12:51:47 AM

This seems like a solution looking for a problem.

Quiet PCs are great, and most of the early ones were completely quiet. But, for gaming? It's not as clear. For the same performance I can save a load of money, or get much better performance for the price.

For listening to Mozart's g minor string quintette? Great. For blowing up bridge or shooting aliens with a machine gun? I'm just not sure sound matters as much. For a living room box that does most things fine, and is quiet, I'll take a 35 watt Kaveri, and still have enough money left over to make a more powerful machine than this $2600 monster.

I also don't understand the relatively cheap processor. For $2600 (which is what the ad says, but the author never seemed to mention, so it's hard to be sure), the processor should be the i7-4970K. Haswell-E might work too, but probably the 4970K would be best.

Someone is going to want this, but I think it's very limited in scope. Silence, or near silence, is great for computers, but for different segments. Most gamers want performance for their dollar, and this falls short.

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September 30, 2014 1:03:36 AM

lunyone said:
Did I miss the price on this?
"The price for this machine is only $330 over the self-built option, with us using the closest-matching $400 OrigenAE case. If you subtract the $49 overclock fee and $99 cable service, Steiger only has about $189 in mark-up."
$2578 like the link above it shows, for this exact configuration. The base price for this system is $999, so you can see it has a lot of upgrades.

The next guy after you suggested using cheaper parts. We have the SBM for that.

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September 30, 2014 2:32:59 AM

Quote:
$2578 like the link above it shows, for this exact configuration. The base price for this system is $999, so you can see it has a lot of upgrades.

The next guy after you suggested using cheaper parts. We have the SBM for that.

I thought is was an ad price listed like the ads listed on other pages, so I guess I just assumed that was an ad price :) 
For a gaming/htpc I think this is just too much $. I would have went with something below $6-800, but that is just me.
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September 30, 2014 2:47:07 AM

In what universe is this a good value?

You can build a quieter computer with a better video card (GTX970) for about HALF THE PRICE. I built a system and here are the only noise elements:
1) Noctua cooler (runs at 300RPM in idle)
2) BeQuiet PSU (inaudible)
3) Asus Strix GTX970 (has 0dB mode)

I don't have the card yet but it would be completely silent unless doing heavy gaming. My system can't be heard from one foot away in a silent room.

Other:
- 2xRAID0 for SSD is pointless in the real-world.
- not sure where that "16dB" number came from considering the PC has a pump, a radiator fan, and a GTX770. That's pretty much impossible.
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September 30, 2014 3:09:18 AM

photonboy said:
In what universe is this a good value?

You can build a quieter computer with a better video card (GTX970) for about HALF THE PRICE. I built a system and here are the only noise elements:
1) Noctua cooler (runs at 300RPM in idle)
2) BeQuiet PSU (inaudible)
3) Asus Strix GTX970 (has 0dB mode)

I don't have the card yet but it would be completely silent unless doing heavy gaming. My system can't be heard from one foot away in a silent room.
I don't think you understand. It's the build cost that's a good value. You can pick your own parts. Well, except for the case.

Your response is like someone saying "How can you call $8 for two 8 oz Fillet Mignons a good deal? I just paid $4 for a pound of hamburger!"

photonboy said:

Other:
- 2xRAID0 for SSD is pointless in the real-world.
- not sure where that "16dB" number came from considering the PC has a pump, a radiator fan, and a GTX770. That's pretty much impossible.
I see you didn't read the article. There's a page called "Power, Heat, and Noise". If you choose to scroll to the bottom of that page, you'll see something that's impossible. And then maybe you'll understand why the company used all these overpriced parts.

What you won't be able to explain is how they're "overcharging" for this exact configuration. Which means, as a builder, they're offering you a good rate. Aka, a fair deal.


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September 30, 2014 3:30:03 AM

Quote:
In what universe is this a good value?
...
- not sure where that "16dB" number came from considering the PC has a pump, a radiator fan, and a GTX770. That's pretty much impossible.
In what universe is it a good idea to repeat the question seven minutes after I answered it?
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September 30, 2014 3:39:36 AM

the problem with having a high performance machine in the lounge room like this is it would be more effective (granted maybe not more simple) to have your existing desktop rig (as i presume most people interested in tv gaming on a pc) to stream to a tiny actually silent box. for the media stuff you can even get a raspberry pi to run xbmc and stick it behind you tv and stream from a NAS or other big computer, for the gaming you could get something more powerful like a NUC and steam stream or limelight or similar in home streaming which is starting to take off now
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September 30, 2014 3:40:37 AM

Crashman,
If you read the conclusion he says the cost is only a couple hundred dollars more than building your own which I disagree with so I think it's fair to comment on his "value" comment.

*I just added up the cost of all the parts, and NOT COUNTING THE CASE but including the software the total comes to $1500 USD.

The cost to buy this machine with these specs was almost $2600. Now if we use $300 for a similar case since I don't think you can buy the case on its own the price difference comes to about $800USD.

*So you can build the same EXACT setup with a difference case and save $800USD by doing it yourself. That is hardly "a couple hundred dollars" difference as stated in the article.
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September 30, 2014 3:57:08 AM

photonboy said:
Crashman,
If you read the conclusion he says the cost is only a couple hundred dollars more than building your own which I disagree with so I think it's fair to comment on his "value" comment.

*I just added up the cost of all the parts, and NOT COUNTING THE CASE but including the software the total comes to $1500 USD.

The cost to buy this machine with these specs was almost $2600. Now if we use $300 for a similar case since I don't think you can buy the case on its own the price difference comes to about $800USD.

*So you can build the same EXACT setup with a difference case and save $800USD by doing it yourself. That is hardly "a couple hundred dollars" difference as stated in the article.

I added up the cost of all the parts when I wrote the article:

Processor 235
Graphics 350
Motherboard 150
Memory 180
System Drive 150
Power 145
Wi-Fi 33

System Drive 125
CPU Cooler 65
Storage Drive 125
Optical 90
case 400
OS 100
Playback SW 100
Overclock 0
Cable Sleeving 0
2248

Prices might have changed a little since I wrote the article, but I bet you'd find any large changes in a component price are eventually picked up by this builder. Moreover, I priced the parts using Google product search and top venders (Newegg, Tigerdirect, Directron, etc) wherever applicable (case and ODD were only available from small venders) on the SAME DAY that I priced the finished system at Steiger Dynamics.

Look, nobody likes to admit they're wrong, that's why I kept a record of all the part prices when I made those calculations. I wanted to be sure that when someone came in here to question my analysis, I'd have the data to prove its validity.
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September 30, 2014 4:06:17 AM

I've got noisy/normal parts inside a selfmade plywood / glass wool case that's placed under a sofa (usb hub wired away from it). The machine is totally silent for real- under any circumstances. Wouldn't even need the sofa on top to be dead silent. Uses 4x 180mm fans that are placed inside veered tunnels to kill all sound reflections. Many people who work with audio have started to build their own cases because the industry has brutally ripped them over the years by selling expensive so called silent components and cases - it's has all been bs. Go DIY.
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September 30, 2014 4:08:35 AM

Now about the noise. You'd think an underground bunker would be supremely quiet, right? And it was, for the most part. Yet when I was testing this machine, it was so quiet that I could hear the passing of overhead spy drones.

Hey, I did say this was an underground bunker :)  Next you'll tell me it was a regular airplane. They got to you, didn't they...
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September 30, 2014 4:19:45 AM

Very nice. This system caters to a different crowd than most of the posters here. Your power, heat and noise section clearly portrays the value in this setup, plus the build quality .

All of you critics can put your gaudy cheap-ass builds in your living room. I'll take something like this or my own home-built SG08 based build for mine.

People with money typically don't have the time to build their own PC. This one clearly caters to them, and it represents a good value for the performance and the aesthetic.
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September 30, 2014 4:25:50 AM

I think it still sacrifices too much to try to be all things in one; if you want a quiet media centre PC then you can't beat an Akasa Euler case with a suitable Haswell processor. With no moving parts besides an HDD (not even that if you use an SSD) you can build a totally silent system that can easily handle modern media centre demands (streaming/downloadable HD content with full HDMI 1080p output with HD audio). If you want to do gaming as well then you can built a separate system and stream to the media centre (you could even install SteamOS for that purpose), with a gaming machine in another room you can still have total silence provided your network is up to the task, but without sacrificing performance. If having the TV tuner is a must then there are USB adapter cables that work just fine, rather than the bulkier boxes; you can even actually fit some PCI cards inside the Akasa Euler if you only have an mSATA drive and the card's the right shape, though that requires some cutting.
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September 30, 2014 7:21:14 AM

Why not ditch the liquid cooler for the CPU and apply that to a AIO GPU cooling solution so more graphics power could be utilized? A devils canyon CPU on any decent down-draft air cooler will fit perfectly and will be much more quiet than the liquid cooler for activities that require silence.

I'd think the best way to achieve a totally silent yet powerful HTPC would be to utilize a laptop-type tech to power down the GPU entirely and switch to integrated graphics so only the air cooler on the CPU is spinning.
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September 30, 2014 8:51:17 AM

1) I apologize for the repeated comment. That was accidental. In fact, I could have phrased things better overall.

2) I somehow skipped over the noise page. My fault; had some issues with my browser. My only concern would be that, despite the noise rating you would still hear the pump as I've used that cooler before and could hear it in a silent room.

I still think a good Noctua cooler would make more sense.

3) PRICING.
Quite a difference in pricing I guess because I used PCPartpicker. I chose an EVGA GTX770 for example and it was about $100 cheaper. I also estimated $300 for the case but you said $400. It's my understanding you can't buy it separately.

Summary:
Again, I perhaps worded things incorrectly but my POINT was meant to be you could build something just as quiet (in my opinion) with basically the same parts for a lot cheaper.

For example, here's my $1600 build using a similar Silverstone case and almost exactly the other main components (not counting extra software): http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VjWWmG

I know it's a "boutique" case so you're paying for that but I guess we disagree in the way the word "VALUE" is used when I can build almost the same thing for a lot cheaper.

Anyway, I apologize if offense was taken.
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September 30, 2014 10:31:16 AM

I think the noise tests should have included another typical htpc situation and that is inside an enclosed television cabinet because that is quite often the situation you put your htpc in, limited room to breathe.
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September 30, 2014 10:31:49 AM

Ehh. Does your HTPC need to be this powerful? Seems easier (and way cheaper) to just build a lower end pc that's capable of playing 4k video, and then just use Steam's in-home streaming with your hefty gaming pc doing all the heavy lifting from the other room.

That's the setup I've got going anyway. Using integrated graphics, an ssd, the stock cpu cooler, and a silent case fan, I barely get any noise out of my HTPC. It's actually way quieter than my playstation and xbox. (It may help that I've got a door on the front of my entertainment cabinet, with a quiet fan setup on the back.)
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September 30, 2014 1:14:32 PM

Well this is reasonable good looking (aka hifi) and reasonable silent. Not so bad at all. Of course you can make this cheaper, but I have seen much worse ready prebuild machines.
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September 30, 2014 1:20:08 PM

No support for M-Discs??? Obsolete already?
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September 30, 2014 1:35:30 PM

2500$? Nope Missiles Barrage, SHOOOOOOOOT
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September 30, 2014 6:53:03 PM

i like it, send me one and i'll advertise it all over my country. thanks :D 
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October 1, 2014 7:24:49 AM

Looks like a microwave in the thumbnail, I expected a microwave review when clicking the link....very disappointed.
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October 1, 2014 9:44:23 AM

I stopped reading when I saw the price. Looks nice, but just too rich for my blood.
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October 1, 2014 1:30:47 PM

A very attractive case and a desirable sound output (aka none)

This thing puts my R4 to shame ;___ ;

Also what fans are being used in this case? I'm sure you could make this thing even more quiet with some gentle typhoons thrown in versus the stock top 140/120mm fan. Maybe for the side 92mm fans you could put in some classy NF-B9's?
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October 1, 2014 2:36:03 PM

The article implies replacing your cable box in the first paragraph but never clarifies. As far as I am aware, there are no PC parts that will allow you to watch cable without a proprietary converter box. I know digital tv adapters exist but I am fairly certain cable companies encrypt the signal now so that you have to use their boxes on every tv (they are tiny and given out for free).

Id be interested if something exists to eliminate the box, or if there is a relatively cheap passthrough card I can install to play the stream through the pc for dvr and custom guide purposes.
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October 1, 2014 2:51:13 PM

rundmcarlson said:
The article implies replacing your cable box in the first paragraph but never clarifies. As far as I am aware, there are no PC parts that will allow you to watch cable without a proprietary converter box. I know digital tv adapters exist but I am fairly certain cable companies encrypt the signal now so that you have to use their boxes on every tv (they are tiny and given out for free).

Id be interested if something exists to eliminate the box, or if there is a relatively cheap passthrough card I can install to play the stream through the pc for dvr and custom guide purposes.
I actually have CableCard on my PC, along with the external adapter for on-demand that I actually never hooked up. And yes, Steiger Dynamics offers the tuner, either as a PCIe card or a network device.

I recommend the network device, because both of these tuners support six simultaneous channels, but only the network device can support multiple viewers: The same company that makes the card and the network device sells extension boxes to connect to your other TVs, or you can access the tuner from other Windows Media Center PCs. I got the PCIe card, and found out that streaming from your PC to the network is broken in Windows 8. Since the network device is already on the network, this isn't a problem.

But then, if you get the network version of the tuner, you have another box right? At least it doesn't need to be in the same room as the PC you're using to buffer/record its signal. Still, if you're going solo, the PCIe card IS a configuration option from Steiger Dynamics.
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October 1, 2014 4:02:38 PM

I just want the case.
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October 1, 2014 4:30:13 PM

Very intriguing product here. A lot of the nay-sayers need to realize this isn't just a HTPC. This is designed to also play games at 1080p on high details. And amazingly enough it can do it on nary a whisper.

Yes, $2500 is steep. No two ways about it. But go to their site and check the other configurations you can get. A 4790K + 970 4GB + 8GB RAM is $1700. That's not much more than you'd pay building it yourself. For one machine that can replace your gaming PC and your cable box and your media server and your XB1/PS4, that's not a bad deal. Just because you may not want one doesn't mean there isn't a market for it or that it isn't an impressive system in its own right.
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October 2, 2014 1:14:24 AM

now get a gtx 980 in there and also a 42-48" 4k 5ms monitor and we are good to go.
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October 2, 2014 1:42:17 AM

I'll throw in my opinion on this as I'm part of the group these guys are marketing to. I'm a huge proponent of silent / quiet (pure silence is a bit overkill) computing solutions in the living room because when your using an expensive high quality sound system, ambient noise and immersion matters. To this end I've been recommending APU's and other low power solutions precisely because the low power in = low thermal energy that needs to be dissipated = less total airflow required. Also since we're talking an actual living space, somewhere your expected to host company, style absolutely matters, it can't look like something that belongs in my lab.

After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

Anyhow decent product, the styling is really nice. You can drop that in a living room and provided the colors don't clash with what you already have it will fit in and match a modern style. It is a bit big and clunky though, would be best if it was installed in a standard stereo stand or possibly a custom enclosure built into the environment.

To those thinking about why you want near-silence for "gaming" in your living room, it's because ambient fan noise really destroys immersion. It's one of those things you don't even notice or think about until you've experienced a quiet environment. You can really get into the zone, having a blast and just enjoying stuff. Environmental acoustic properties play a huge part in how you experience and enjoy something, and so little time is given to explaining that on enthusiast sites.
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October 2, 2014 8:38:48 AM

palladin9479 said:
After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.
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October 2, 2014 11:52:23 AM

RedJaron said:
palladin9479 said:
After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.
The builder might just show up to explain some of his techniques :) 

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October 6, 2014 7:06:08 PM

I think the whole absolute silence thing is really only valued by diehard audiophiles. I have a decently powerful gaming/media rig in my living room and even under load its barely audible, never even close to loud enough to be a problem. It cost maybe $600 bucks.
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October 12, 2014 11:16:30 AM

Thank you all for the great comments and constructive criticism. Sorry for getting in so late:

Haravikk said:
I think it still sacrifices too much to try to be all things in one; if you want a quiet media centre PC then you can't beat an Akasa Euler case with a suitable Haswell processor. With no moving parts besides an HDD (not even that if you use an SSD) you can build a totally silent system that can easily handle modern media centre demands (streaming/downloadable HD content with full HDMI 1080p output with HD audio). If you want to do gaming as well then you can built a separate system and stream to the media centre (you could even install SteamOS for that purpose), with a gaming machine in another room you can still have total silence provided your network is up to the task, but without sacrificing performance. If having the TV tuner is a must then there are USB adapter cables that work just fine, rather than the bulkier boxes; you can even actually fit some PCI cards inside the Akasa Euler if you only have an mSATA drive and the card's the right shape, though that requires some cutting.


The idea (and beauty) of our systems is that you do not need anything else and that it can do all in one without compromise. Our custom liquid cooled LEET Living Room PCs can even do up to Quad-SLI TITAN Zs with an overclocked i7-5960X. And the system is whisper-quiet in idle. Basically you have the option to fully replace your desktop PC (if you want to do your stuff from the sofa - it works great with our Couchmaster lapdesk) and every single box in your living room. I am not saying that it's the most economical way if you already have a plethora of devices for varies functions - but it is the most elegant way.

qlum said:
I think the noise tests should have included another typical htpc situation and that is inside an enclosed television cabinet because that is quite often the situation you put your htpc in, limited room to breathe.


It strongly depends on the cabinet. If one of the sides or the rear is open (most cabinets) there wont be any noticable difference to what was measured in the article. If it's completely closed (which we explicitly do not recommend using with our systems) the overall inside temperature will rise and consequently trigger higher fan rpms. This is however strongly dependant on system specifications and we talk this through with every single customer.

dmitche3 said:
No support for M-Discs??? Obsolete already?


The slim slot-in BR drives we are using in the MAVEN unfortunately have no M-DISC support. As far as we know there is no such drive on the market supporting it. However, our full-size optical drives in the LEET model all fully support M-DISC:

dovah-chan said:
A very attractive case and a desirable sound output (aka none)

This thing puts my R4 to shame ;___ ;

Also what fans are being used in this case? I'm sure you could make this thing even more quiet with some gentle typhoons thrown in versus the stock top 140/120mm fan. Maybe for the side 92mm fans you could put in some classy NF-B9's?


Stock fans of any pre-sealed custum liquid cooling solution are completely unusable in our case. We are using Gentle Typhoon (if available) or similarly high-quality high-static-pressure fans for our systems. This is combined with a UEFI fan curve which is customized and tested for every single system to provide maximum idle and full load quietness while keeping all temps well within specs. Customizing this is necessary since every CPU (especially when overclocked) is different in terms of efficiency. For our highest-end Quad-SLI LEET systems, where we need to go up to 1800 rpm on full load, we get custom UEFIs from Asus which allow us to set fan curves with extreme ranges.

The Indomitable said:
I just want the case.


We do sell it unoficially :)  Please send us an email or live chat message. Contact info on our website.
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October 12, 2014 11:31:21 AM

Crashman said:
RedJaron said:
palladin9479 said:
After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.
The builder might just show up to explain some of his techniques :) 



The MAVEN case, due to its relatively compact size, does not allow for GPU custom liquid cooling. Our LEET chassis fully supports it. Depending on the chosen specs, CLC might be overkill though. We are testing pretty much all graphics cards on the market and only use the quietest. If we are not happy we will customize fan curves on the OS level. We recommend the LEET with CLC for all SLI configurations. One graphics card will usually stay quiet enough so CLC is not needed.

As for the color, as mentioned above, we offer everything in silver and black, perfectly color matching 99% of AVRs out there. If we feel that another color is necessary (and can be done with anodizing), we will certainly offer that too.

For best audio results, we recommend using HDMI (standard) to a receiver. Only HDMI allows digital bitstreamed lossless TrueHD/dts-master 7.1 or higher (ATMOS is making inroads into the living room). We are working with our customers to get the best audio and video quality for their respective setup. Alternative standard audio options would be jacks (up to 5.1 analog) or optical SPDI/F (up to 5.1 analog). Optionally, we offer high-end analog sound cards (up to 7.1 RCA) or 32-channel professional.
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October 15, 2014 3:59:52 PM

STEIGERDYNAMICS said:
For best audio results, we recommend using HDMI (standard) to a receiver. Only HDMI allows digital bitstreamed lossless TrueHD/dts-master 7.1 or higher (ATMOS is making inroads into the living room). We are working with our customers to get the best audio and video quality for their respective setup. Alternative standard audio options would be jacks (up to 5.1 analog) or optical SPDI/F (up to 5.1 analog). Optionally, we offer high-end analog sound cards (up to 7.1 RCA) or 32-channel professional.

I'm not aware of any games that can output DTS-Master, TrueHD, or similar audio. The vast majority use multichannel LPCM. That's why I said for gaming you'd need to patch the multichannel outs on the mboard to the receiver and use HDMI for media like DVDs and Blu-rays.
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