AVADirect $1,000 Gaming PC Review

Chris Hardwick is here to review the AVADirect $1,000 Gaming PC, an affordable gaming rig that wants to play with the big boys.

What You Need to Know

• The case design is pretty standard; it’s about 1.5’ tall and has lots of fans for cooling
• Even though the handle makes it look a little awkward, it's really easy to carry around
• The case is nice and big for lots of expansion
• There are plenty of spots for hard drives and Blu-ray burners, but no extra video card slot, though (that would have been nice to future-proof it)
• They did do a good job of keeping the inside clutter-free; there’s plenty of room to work, and it should be easy to swap out components
• Our gaming benchmarks scored higher on this than on other machines we've reviewed that cost $2,500 and that's something we never expected
• Of course, it'll play any game with ease; Crysis 2 runs extremely well, and we're confident new games like Portal 2 and Battlefield 3 will look great, too

Specs

• Thermaltake, V5 Black Mid-Tower Case, w/ Handle, ATX, No PSU, Steel
• Thermaltake, TR2 Standard 500W Power Supply, 24-pin ATX12V V2.2 EPS12V, Retail
• Intel, DH67CLB3, LGA1155, Intel. H67, DDR3-1333 32GB /4, PCIe x16, SATA 3Gb/s RAID 5 /3, 6Gb/s /2, DVI, HDMI, USB 3.0 /2, HDA, GbLAN, ATX, Retail
• Intel, Core i5-2400 Quad-Core 3.1GHz, HD Graphics 2000, LGA1155, 6MB L3 Cache, 32nm, 95W, EM64T EIST TB VT-d VT-x XD, Retail
• Kingston, 4GB (2 x 2GB) XMP HyperX Blu PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz CL9 (9-9-9-27) 1.65V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
• XFX, Radeon HD 6950 800MHz, 1GB GDDR5 5000MHz, PCIe x16 CrossFire, 2x DVI+HDMI+2x mini-DP, Retail
• Samsugn, 1TB SpinPoint F3, SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200-RPM, 32MB Cache, Retail
• RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
• LG Electronics, UH10LS20 Black 10x/16x/48x BD/DVD1RW/CD-RW Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive w/ Lightscribe, SATA, Retail
• Microsoft, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition, OEM
• Warranty, Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

Price

• $1,023

Overall Rating

• 5 Seals of Approval Out of 5 (How do we rate gadgets?)
• This rig not only lived up to our expectations, it exceeded them by a lot, so it’s one of the best deals we've seen in awhile
• To get $30 off the purchase of this computer, go to AVADirect’s site and enter the promo code “AOTS2” at checkout.

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