avadirect

AVADirect continues small gaming PC trend

We can't help but feel a little responsible for AVADirect's newly announced GT3 Custom Gaming PCs.

A few months back, we linked to a blog post from Ed Borden highlighting GTR Tech's seemingly ignored GT3 slim tower desktop case as a 2-year-old precursor to HP's Firebird. Following that post, we heard from an enthusiastic Misha Troshin, CMO of AVADirect, informing us of his intention to sign up with GTR Tech for the GT3.

A chief benefit of the GT3 is that it offers a slim profile, but it also lets you add a full-size graphics card. … Read more

iCore-driven Clevo D900F notebook a beast

Normally, when you're reading off specs for laptops, an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor isn't listed--for gaming laptops, desktop replacements, or otherwise--and with good reason. We've had a few quad-core systems in the past, like the Toshiba Qosmio X305, but those Q9000 CPUs were made for these notebooks. So, what do you get when you cram a desktop processor into a notebook? A beast.

AVADirect will be the first reseller in the U.S. to offer a notebook using the Intel Core i7 quad-core desktop processor. The Clevo D900F 17-inch gaming notebook can pack up to 12GB … Read more

Overclocked AVADirect desktop wins Editors' Choice

We posted a review of an AVADirect Custom Gaming PC yesterday afternoon. With one of the single largest, yet stable, CPU overclocks we've ever seen, this expertly build, attractive, and cost-competitive gaming desktop impressed us enough to earn an Editor's Choice award. You can read the review here (video should post shortly).

As you might note from the lengthy service and support section in the review, AVADirect has something of an image problem online, in particular on the forums at enthusiast site HardOCP. We're not blind to the concerns raised on the HardForum, and we've read … Read more

AVADirect simplifies its PC offerings

If you've read our desktop reviews over the past few years, you may have noticed write-ups of a few desktops from AVADirect. This lesser-known PC vendor has impressed us with both the value and the build-quality of its systems, but we've been reluctant to recommend them to average PC buyers because its Web site was so daunting. A typical power-supply drop-down menu, for example, would list 40 or 50 different options. Enthusiasts might love that sort of thing (those not building their own PCs, at least), but even average PC gamers don't always want to deal with … Read more

A lab on fire: Five gaming PCs that torched our benchmarks

Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm a console gamer. Always have been, since my friend down the street in Minneapolis got an Atari 2600 in 1979, and I trumped him a year later with Mattel's Intellivision. (Along with George Plimpton, we found Intellivision's Major League Baseball to be clearly superior to Atari's Home Run baseball. Intellivision baseball, hockey, and skiing were pretty much all I cared about in 1980.) Like Larry King with wives, there's long list of consoles that I traded in for newer models over the years: Intellivision to Intellivision 2, to … Read more