AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC

When you're shopping for a serious gaming desktop, you tend to snag the most powerful machine when you abandon all monetary constraints. But it doesn't have to be that way. Although the AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC ($3,100 direct) will never be confused with a budget system, this mid-size rig has undeniable gaming chops and will cost you less than competing systems. Its powerful processor and smart storage arrangement are enough to chew through any processing task, and its high-end video card ratchets up the system's gaming performance to a competitive level. You can find more powerful gaming desktops, but this one is a solid choice if you don't want your PC to take over your room or kill your budget.

Design and Features
AVADirect has used as the case for the Quiet X79 Gaming PC a white version of the NZXT H2, which sports accents of a bare metal panel on the front tower door and blue and white glowing LEDs. It's a look similar to that of the Polywell Ignition X7900i-3960 ($4,599 street, 4 stars), but cleaner?and much more sedate than the flame paint-job on the iBuypower Chimera 4-V1 ($2,499 direct, 4 stars).

On the top panel you'll find a power button, three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, headphone and microphone jacks, and a three-speed fan controller. A magnetic plastic cover hides the top fan vent, but can be easily adjusted or removed to improve airflow. A snapping cover also serves as a lid for a SATA-equipped hot-swappable drive bay.

On the front of the tower you'll find a Blu-ray (BD-RE) optical drive, and a 65-in-1 card reader that accommodates every major media card format, including SD/MMC, microSD, CF/MD, MS/Pro/Duo, and xD, plus another USB 2.0 port thrown in for good measure. On the back of the tower you'll find scads of connections, with six USB 2.0 ports (one of which is occupied by a Bluetooth receiver), four USB 3.0 ports, a USB BIOS flashback port, and two USB/eSATA combination ports. The Gigabit Ethernet port is your only networking option, as the Silent Gaming PC has no Wi-Fi. Display outputs include two DVI, one HDMI, and one full-size DisplayPort. There are also several audio outputs, with ports for S/PDIF and eight-channel analog audio.

Pull off the case's side panel (the thumbscrews make it easy) and you'll find that the Quiet X79 Gaming PC is equipped with both a 120GB SSD (which serves as the OS drive) and a silent 2TB Western Digital hard drive (for storage). Plugged into the Asus P9X79 motherboard is a six-core Intel Core i7-3930K processor?the same model found in both the Chimera 4-V1 and the Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (Intel Core i7-3930K) ($4,999 direct, 3.5 stars)?equipped with a giant heat sink?fan unit to keep it cool, and an overclocked Asus video card based on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 GPU. A quintet of whisper-quiet fans keep everything cool.

An 850-watt power supply provides more than enough juice for all of the Quiet X79 Gaming PC's components, and additional hardware if you choose to upgrade?and there are plenty of upgrade options available. Though the system comes equipped with 16GB of RAM, there are four open DIMM slots on the motherboard, which supports up to 64GB total RAM. You'll find four open PCI Express (PCIe) slots, though the two PCIe x1 slots are blocked by the bulky video card, and one open 5.25-inch drive bay; four SATA ports are also free.

Because this is a custom gaming rig, you'll find that the hard drive is immaculate, with the only software installed being Windows 7 Professional. The Quiet X79 Gaming PC also comes with AVADirect's Silver Warranty Package, a three-year warranty on parts and labor.

Performance
In our tests the Quiet X79 Gaming PC proved it's able to mix it up with much more expensive gaming rigs. It tore through our processor-intensive Photoshop CS5 test in 2 minutes 31 seconds?ahead of the Polywell Ignition X7900i-3960 (2:34) and the iBuypower Chimera 4-V1 (2:42), but behind the 2:21 of the Digital Storm ODE Level 3 ($2,399 direct, 4.5 stars) and the 2:22 of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (2:22). It finished Handbrake in 58 seconds, beating out the Chimera 4-V1 (1:03) and tying with the Ignition X7900i-3960 (0:58), but falling short of the ODE Level 3 (0:56).

The Quiet X79 Gaming PC pumped out respectable frame rates in our gaming tests, cranking through Crysis and Lost Planet 2 at 43 frames per second (fps), both at 1,920-by-1080 resolution with 4x anti-aliasing and high detail settings. Although these are playable scores, they can't match those of rigs running multiple graphics cards, like the ODE Level 3 (71 fps in Crysis, 122 fps in Lost Planet 2), which is equipped with two GTX 570 cards, or the Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (44fps in Crysis, 81fps in Lost Planet 2), which contains two GTX 580 cards.

The AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC offers impressive performance and graphics for its relatively modest price tag. If you want a gaming rig that offers similar processing power, better graphics performance and a lower price, you may want to opt for the Digital Storm ODE Level 3, our Editors' Choice for midrange gaming PCs. If you want competitive performance with a realistic price tag, however, the AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC is tough to top.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the AVADirect Quiet X79 Gaming PC with several other desktops side by side.

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