AVADirect's Mini Cube Gaming PC Offers Objective Value
AVADirect’s three-year warranty is long enough for our liking, but does require you to send the system back for support. The firm pays the return shipping bill, but a lower overall cost and the price of downtime leads us to value the protection package at around 10% of the complete system. The bundled operating system factors in as well; it's worth about 4% of the system price. So, any of our builds, which don't include warranties or software, need to beat AVADirect's submission by at least 14% to make up the difference.
When overall performance sets the benchmark, AVADirect’s choice of hardware does provide better value than our own System Builder Marathon configuration. The system we pieced together using ASRock's M8 barebones platform lands even higher on the value scale, but only because it’s also in a lower performance bracket. Moreover, AVADirect is able to match computing giant Lenovo in this regard.
The value of AVADirect’s mini gaming machine only falters in games at high resolutions. Our $2550 System Builder Marathon setup packed three graphics cards specifically to address this discipline. Lenovo also calls its Erazer X700 a gaming machine, though its creation takes last place in high-resolution gaming value.
When we tabulate the scores, calculate the value, and take a critical look inside AVADirect's Mini Cube Gaming PC, we see that the company is fully capable of building a quality machine without compromising value. Factoring in warranty coverage and a bundled operating system to the cost, it appears that we're getting hours of assembly labor nearly free. That sounds like a bargain specifically for anyone who lacks either the time or skill to replicate a boutique builder's efforts.
