AVADirect Mini Gaming PC: Titan in a Small Package
Performance Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary: As you can see, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan gives AVADirect’s new Mini Gaming PC some serious firepower. It offers extremely high frame rates for most games and strong frame rates in the latest titles, as well. It proves that an SFF (Small Form Factor) PC is perfectly capable of giving you an excellent gaming experience, given the right components.
We have a lot of good things to say about AVADirect’s Mini Gaming PC, but we should also note one problem we encountered. As benchmarking got underway, the system occasionally crashed. Sometimes, it would freeze in the middle of a benchmark – at others, it would blue screen and restart. The system provided strong scores, but its stability obviously wasn’t acceptable for a customer. We contacted AVADirect to see how their technical support staff handled the situation and one of its tech support personnel walked us through several troubleshooting steps. He struck us as knowledgeable and professional, and didn’t waste time with unnecessary testing. He eventually settled on the SSD as a possible culprit. The company’s policy would be (with a customer) to replace the drive and continue troubleshooting if that didn’t solve the problem.
Given the system’s performance and the way AVADirect handled the situation, we’re comfortable recommending the AVA Mini Gaming PC. Problems are bound to arise occasionally, and having the personnel and policies in place to support the customer is critical to a system builder’s reputation. Like a customer, we'd prefer to not have to enlist the help of an OEM's technical support staff, but when we do, it's good to see that they're competent and professional.
Going beyond gaming performance, the AVADirect Mini Gaming PC is a great choice for LAN parties. Although it’s not quite as small as the Maingear Potenza, it’s easy to carry and won’t take up much space at your table. The Prodigy case gives it killer looks and the Titan, of course, is one of the most powerful and power-efficient graphics cards on the market. The performance and polish together make this Mini Gaming PC a worthy system, though we're hopeful AVA roots out the issue we observed and eliminates it with future test flows.
;)
We have a lot of good things to say about AVADirect’s Mini Gaming PC, but we should also note one problem we encountered. As benchmarking got underway, the system occasionally crashed. Sometimes, it would freeze in the middle of a benchmark – at others, it would blue screen and restart. The system provided strong scores, but its stability obviously wasn’t acceptable for a customer. We contacted AVADirect to see how their technical support staff handled the situation and one of its tech support personnel walked us through several troubleshooting steps. He struck us as knowledgeable and professional, and didn’t waste time with unnecessary testing. He eventually settled on the SSD as a possible culprit. The company’s policy would be (with a customer) to replace the drive and continue troubleshooting if that didn’t solve the problem.Given the system’s performance and the way AVADirect handled the situation, we’re comfortable recommending the AVA Mini Gaming PC. Problems are bound to arise occasionally, and having the personnel and policies in place to support the customer is critical to a system builder’s reputation. Like a customer, we'd prefer to not have to enlist the help of an OEM's technical support staff, but when we do, it's good to see that they're competent and professional.
Going beyond gaming performance, the AVADirect Mini Gaming PC is a great choice for LAN parties. Although it’s not quite as small as the Maingear Potenza, it’s easy to carry and won’t take up much space at your table. The Prodigy case gives it killer looks and the Titan, of course, is one of the most powerful and power-efficient graphics cards on the market. The performance and polish together make this Mini Gaming PC a worthy system, though we're hopeful AVA roots out the issue we observed and eliminates it with future test flows.
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