Introducing the AVADirect Silent Gaming PC

One of the benefits of going with a boutique builder is being able to get custom machines that are a little more specialized than what you might get from HP or even Alienware. While bigger vendors can produce their own cases, those designs have to suit a wide variety of customers. Boutiques can cherry pick existing hardware and modify it for specific purposes, gearing each build to suit the end user's exact needs. It's the same benefit many of us enjoy from building our own machines, but for those who can't or won't, builders like AVADirect are here to pick up the slack.

Which leads us to today's build, which AVADirect dubs their Silent Gaming PC. Their builders have tried to take a standard powerhouse boutique machine and kill the noise. Did they succeed, or is the Silent Gaming PC only the sum of its parts? To AVADirect's credit, as you'll see from the spec sheet below they tried fairly hard to produce a system that actually is balanced. What do I mean by balanced?

Generally when you overclock or even just choose components, there's an inflection point where power consumption, expense, and performance line up. This is the reason Sandy Bridge-E isn't particularly attractive to most users, why SLI or CrossFire are seldom worthwhile, and why it often only makes sense to overclock hardware so far. AVADirect produced a system that, as you'll see, smartly targets the sweet spot for enthusiasts: enough CPU performance to handle any task and enough gaming performance to handle any single-monitor configuration (generally 1080p). And in the process, they tried to keep it quiet.

For the price, you actually do get a decent amount of machine. AVADirect equipped our review unit with Intel's fastest Sandy Bridge processor along with a GeForce GTX 580 with a custom triple-slot cooler to hopefully help reduce noise levels during gaming. 8GB of DDR3 isn't mind-blowing at this point, but it's more than enough for most users, and AVADirect wisely continues to employ an SSD system drive and HDD storage drive configuration.

I'm also happy to see a high quality power supply along with a high-end CPU cooler. When trying to achieve absolute silence, high-end air-coolers are often preferable to water-cooling systems, and AVADirect has chosen to incorporate two Gelid silent 120mm fans in a push-pull configuration on the Prolimatech Megahalems tower heatsink.

System Performance

Ordinarily we'd have split the performance pages into two sections, application and gaming, but our benchmark suite has actually undergone a bit of a refresh. The changes to our gaming suite Jarred mentioned in his post here carry over to desktops, where we'll be testing systems at the High preset only, as well as testing the High preset at 5760x1200 whenever practical (mostly SLI/CF configurations).

As a result, the only gaming results we currently have for desktops are for the AVADirect Silent Gaming PC we have on hand right now, and we'll gradually add more as more systems come in. I've also taken the opportunity to prune our existing benchmark results where possible.

AVADirect's system comes to us with three different overclocking profiles available for the i7-2700K: 4.5GHz, 4.6GHz, and a blistering 4.8GHz. It was shipped with the 4.6GHz profile enabled, and that's the one we're going with; frankly the voltage on the 4.8GHz profile is a bit on the high side and would be difficult to recommend for sustained use. That and as you'll see later on, while there's some thermal headroom, the heatsink and fan combo have to work harder and largely negate the advantages of building a silent (or at least quiet) system.

The i7-2700K's 4.6GHz clock is among the fastest overclocks we've tested, and certainly enough to steal top billing in situations that are more dependent on single-threaded performance. Once we get to multi-threaded tasks, though, any of the hex-core processors are able to produce superior performance. Note, though, that in both PCMarks the blistering fast second-generation SandForce controller powering the AVADirect system's OCZ Vertex 3 SSD is enough to produce a sizable advantage.

The 3DMarks are a bit less kind to AVADirect's system, but keep in mind what it's competing against: a GeForce GTX 580 is the fastest single-GPU card in NVIDIA's stable, while virtually every other system except for WarFactory's budget gaming rig is employing at least two GPUs. In practice, a single GTX 580 is sufficient to run just about every game currently out at high detail settings and QHD/QWXGA resolutions.

With all of these games running at our High preset, a single GTX 580 is more than enough to handle 1080p gaming, and this is a point I want to drive home: SLI and CrossFire are nice ideas, but a single GPU is both less of a headache and still perfectly adequate for single monitor gaming. All of these games still have plenty of performance headroom on the GTX 580.

You'll note that Civilization V is missing from the benchmark table, though. While the game itself actually runs perfectly fine with no problems on the system, the benchmark mode refuses to run at anything but 1650x1050. It's unusual, and even NVIDIA is stumped as to why this problem materialized. For what it's worth, while I can't provide any concrete numbers I will say that my own desktop with a GeForce GTX 580 and i7-990X has had no problems at all providing a silky smooth framerate in this game at 1920x1200 with 8xAA and VSync enabled—and Jarred has been running a GTX 580 with a 30" LCD since July, with no complaints regarding gaming performance.

Build, Heat, and Power Consumption

In discussing this build with AVADirect, I openly expressed my concerns about the use of NZXT's H2 enclosure. We reviewed the H2 enclosure some time ago and found it to be wanting, and during my meetings at CES I found the general sentiment pretty much lined up with our evaluation: it's a good idea, but it's flawed. AVADirect assured me that in their testing, they found the H2 was the best choice and the best deal for their build.

I was skeptical. The H2 feels like a choice motivated by cutting costs rather than performance; were it not for the design flaw (the front intakes are suffocated if the door is closed) it would certainly be close to an ideal boutique enclosure. Sure enough, though, you'll see AVADirect was able to make the H2 work. My guess is that the Prolimatech Megahalems cooler coupled with the bottom intake fan were able to go a long way towards redeeming the enclosure choice.

AVADirect also opted for a triple-slot custom cooler-equipped GeForce GTX 580 from ASUS. The stock cooler on the GTX 580 isn't bad at all (my SilverStone FT02 is able to keep my overclocked 580 from making much of a racket under load), but a better cooler certainly couldn't hurt. The Seasonic power supply and pair of Gelid silent fans on the heatsink help, too, but the Western Digital Green hard disk seemed like an unnecessary cut; I don't feel like the hard drive was going to be a major source of noise for the build.

Jarred was skeptical about a silent (or at least extremely low noise) build being possible with an overclocked i7 and a GTX 580, but I believed and still believe it could be done. Why do I say "still believe"? With all the case fans set on low, idle noise of AVADirect's build remains well below the 40dB "aggravation threshold," and even a GPU load doesn't noticeably affect noise levels. Unfortunately, the instant you stress test the CPU the Gelid fans start really kicking in and AVADirect's system goes to pot with a measured 42dB noise level from about a foot away. [Jarred: Isn't "very quiet" at least less than 30dB?]

And then there's my favorite whipping boy: the overclock. AVADirect should be commended for offering three overclock profiles with what appear to be manually tuned CPU voltages. So what's the problem? Simple: the voltages are set to manual and not offset mode. What this means is that the CPU voltage (and this is true of every overclock profile) never idles, leaving power and heat savings on the table.

At CES I had a conversation with iBuyPower's Ricky Lee, and he took me to task for being a bit harder on boutiques than I probably ought to be. His feedback wasn't unreasonable and I took it to heart, but one area where we disagreed was the importance of a well-tuned overclock. He argued that end users aren't going to notice how precise the overclock is, and as long as the computer functions properly and continues to function properly, it's not a major issue. My position is this: a wasteful overclock has the potential to make its presence known both on your power bill and, frankly, on the room temperature. Computers are extremely wasteful when it comes to power, and a fast machine can spew a lot of heat into a room in a hurry. Not allowing the CPU voltage to idle results in wasted power and increased heat.

While load temps are reasonable, idle temperatures are actually quite high for a custom desktop. The custom cooler on the GTX 580 is doing its job, but the CPU's cores should be 5-10C lower. How does this play out in power consumption?

Sandy Bridge is already a pretty frugal architecture, but Puget Systems is able to shave thirty watts off the idle power despite having two idle video cards. Is thirty watts a big deal in the grand scheme of things? Probably not, but it's wasteful all the same.

Conclusion: Mostly Solid, Mostly Sound

In their Silent Gaming PC, AVADirect has produced a reasonably balanced, powerful build that goes a large way towards proving a powerful system can still run quietly. While "silent" is a bit of a misnomer (even AVADirect uses "silent" and "low-noise" in the same sentence though these two terms do not mean the same thing), I have a hard time believing most users will be annoyed by the idle noise. Since gaming typically taxes the GPU far more than the CPU and the custom cooler on the GTX 580 runs incredibly quietly, gamers aren't going to have any complaints with AVADirect's build.

Where things go awry is with the processor. The i7-2700K is capable of being a quiet and efficient chip even under an overclock, but in this build the use of a manual voltage setting instead of an offset plays hell on idle power and heat, while the load noise of the heatsink/fan combo on the CPU is very noticeable and even irritating. I may be using a SilverStone FT02 as my personal enclosure, but if I can get a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ and a pair of Scythe fans to keep a 4GHz i7-990X both cool and quiet under maximum, sustained load, AVADirect should be able to get that i7-2700K under control.

When I brought that problem to AVADirect's attention, they suggested using the lowest overclock setting (4.5GHz) and then reducing the duty cycle on the CPU fans. Indeed, that wound up for the most part doing the trick, but then why wasn't this the default? You can hear the CPU fans spin up just a little, but the difference is negligible, and I'd be willing to sacrifice 100MHz on the processor to achieve silence.

I will say part of the acoustic issue lies with the NZXT H2. That's something the end user can fix, but the next problem is that the alternatives AVADirect does offer are either overpriced or bad. You can get Fractal Design's Define R3 (an awesome enclosure to be sure), but there's a $60 premium on it for an enclosure that's only $10 more in retail. For that there's a good reason: Fractal Design isn't directly sourcing to any OEMs yet, so while AVADirect can order H2s in bulk from NZXT, they have to buy Fractal Design retail just like the rest of us taxpaying ninjas. So why aren't they sourcing from Antec instead? Antec's P183 or P280 would both be preferable to the H2, and the P280 is only $30 more in retail than the H2. The P183 should be made available as an option, but it's not.

Of course, I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. The main strikes against AVADirect's Silent Gaming PC are what they almost always are with boutiques: a questionable case and a poorly-tuned overclock. In terms of value for money, AVADirect presents a more convincing argument. $2,200 is a lot, but most of the components are top of the line. While I think Puget Systems could probably beat AVADirect in terms of acoustics in relation to performance, a comparable system from them will tack $400 on to your end price, they won't overclock the CPU for you, and the one year warranty still sticks out like a sore thumb in a market where every other vendor has standardized on three. So while the load noise on the CPU under heavy stress is a black mark on an otherwise quiet build, AVADirect's outing ends up being a good one. Just don't buy one expecting true silence, as it's really more of a quiet gaming PC (which obviously isn't as marketable).