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AVADirect’s Mini Cube Gaming PC: Good Looks, Price, And Performance

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Boutique builders employ an endless array of customizations to win over customers who don’t have the time or desire to piece together a PC. But enthusiasts in the know still want to feel like they're getting a fair deal. Can AVADirect demonstrate value?

Power, Heat, And Efficiency

AVADirect’s Mini Gaming PC leverages the Haswell CPU architecture to turn less energy into heat, but so does our own ASRock M8-based build. Its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card also pulls around 100 W more than the 760 in our barebones M8.

Both the baseline M8 and factory-overclocked AVADirect configurations push Intel’s Core i7-4770K to its thermal throttling point. The overclocked M8 was fixed by reversing two of its fans, but the system was always far noisier than AVADirect’s Mini Gaming PC.

Using the average of all systems as a baseline, the comparison of power to performance shows that AVADirect’s machine produced 5.8% better-than-average performance using 17.8% less-than-average energy, for a 28.8% above-average efficiency rating.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Someone Somewhere
    Page four. The ASRock system has an i7-4770K. How is the CPU cooler an 'AMD Boxed Cooler"?

    Also, many of those seem somewhat unbalanced, especially for a gaming system.

    EDIT: Toss an R9 290X or 780 in the M8 and drop to a 4670K, and you'd have a real value winner.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    12209289 said:
    Page four. The ASRock system has an i7-4770K. How is the CPU cooler an 'AMD Boxed Cooler"?

    Also, many of those seem somewhat unbalanced, especially for a gaming system.

    EDIT: Toss an R9 290X or 780 in the M8 and drop to a 4670K, and you'd have a real value winner.
    Thanks for catching the pasting errors, it helped me fix two articles :) As for the rest of the ASRock build, I used what was available. Remember that A WHOPPING 1/3 of the benchmark set does benefit from the i7's added cache and/or HT, and that ONLY 1/3 of the benchmarks benefit from a higher-model graphics card :p
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    12209289 said:
    Page four. The ASRock system has an i7-4770K. How is the CPU cooler an 'AMD Boxed Cooler"?

    Also, many of those seem somewhat unbalanced, especially for a gaming system.

    EDIT: Toss an R9 290X or 780 in the M8 and drop to a 4670K, and you'd have a real value winner.

    A 290-X in a mini-ITX case?!? He wants a P.C., not a space heater!
    Reply
  • Menigmand
    "Good looks" are highly subjective... I would say that case is not pretty. If the AVA sticker can be removed, and there's an option without the optical drive, then it would be better.
    Reply
  • vaughn2k
    We'll.. this is another good example of implementing modular cables. But I really don't like the idea of blocking the inside of the computer with a power supply, unless it is designed the way like Thermaltake Elite 120 does...
    Reply
  • vertexx
    Nice article. I'm not for the fake chrome vinyl wrap look, and I would question how long that would last.

    Overall though, it's good to see these guys putting together a nice compact, high performing PC.
    Reply
  • vertexx
    The same parts plus OS can be purchased for ~$1,900. Still, for someone who doesn't want to mess with building a system, it looks like a decent value.
    Reply
  • Steveymoo
    So expensive >< Jesus Christ.
    Reply
  • MooseMuffin
    These guys seem pretty price competitive actually. I just ran through their configurator with a system I put together for myself recently and it came within $150. Not bad considering you get the warranty, and that every other boutique seems to mark up way more with fewer part options.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    Love that case. The polished aluminum look should be on all high end builds regardless of chassis size, in my opinion.
    Reply