Need to Know
Pros:
- Great for 4K gaming
- RAID 0 OS drive
- Good factory overclock
- No bloatware
Cons:
- 16GB of RAM may be limiting for some
- Cooling could be more efficient
- 1TB HDD
The underdogs are the ones we tend to root for
There are two ways to get your PC gaming fix satisfaction: buy a pre-built system from a reputable system integrator, or build your own. As Jimmy pointed out in his editorial, buying a pre-built systems is totally OK, even with us folk here at Maximum PC. We love PCs, in all forms.
When V3 sent its new Avenger system to us for review, we were in a bit of an unusual place. This is because V3 is lesser known than some of the other manufacturers that you may have come across. But as we found out, the company's gaming rigs are well up to the task when it comes to dishing out raw performance, and being precisely tuned.
One big annoyance with system integrators, especially the ones that are huge, is that systems tend to come loaded with bloatware, and a bunch of manufacturer utilities that we just don't need. The bundled crap slows down system performance and is an overall nuisance to the experience. And what about system optimizations? Forget it. Typically, you'll only get those details from companies that have proven to be able to build capable machines and pay attention to things like clean wiring. Let's find out if V3 has the chops.
Beefy enough to power Ultron
The Avenger is a fully stocked system, and we mean stocked to the brim. The motherboard cavity is filled more than we thought could naturally fit inside the rugged Corsair Vengeance C70. The chassis itself is one of Corsair's best built cases, and the rugged styling is something we're pretty fond of. The C70 has clamps that hold in the side panels, which make accessing the system for tweaks and upgrades a cinch. Couple these with the built-in handles, and moving the Avenger from place to place is an easy task. The large power and reset buttons on the outside make things simple too, for when that excessive overclock you tried wedges your PC.
On the inside, the Avenger is packed with the following:
| Hardware Specifications | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-5960X |
| Motherboard | MSI X99S SLI Plus |
| Graphics Card | 3x Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 |
| Memory | 16GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 |
| SSD | 2x Samsung 850 Pro 250GB (RAID 0) |
| HDD | Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB |
| PSU | Corsair HX1050 |
| Optical | TSST Bluray/DVD Combo |
| Cooling | V3 Components Voltair V3TEC120-FC01 TEC |
| Network | Intel i218 Gigabit (motherboard) |
| Audio | Realtek ALC892 (motherboard) |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 8.1 Core Edition |
| Extras | No software bloat! |
Intel's Core i7-5960X is a beast, there's no question about it. In fact, it's still our top pick for best CPU until something else comes out in the same class. The 5960X hums along at a 3GHz default clock speed, but V3 has overclocked the nipper to 4.3GHz stable. During our looping benchmarks, never once did the system lock up or produce any anomalies.
Uncommon cooling
To cool the CPU, V3 uses its own custom cooler called the Voltair TEC, which is an enormous copper/aluminum heatsink coupled with a custom thermoelectric cooling plate—you may know it as a Peltier cooler. Essentially, the pad has two sides—one is hot and the other is cold when DC current flows through the elements sandwiched between the two sides. The TEC itself is solid state, with the only drawback being that it requires energy and requires a beefy heatsink to draw heat away from the hot side.
The Voltair TEC is big. In fact, it's so big that it actually pushes against the clear panel of the C70. Obviously, the Avenger could benefit from a slightly larger case, but this isn't a show-stopper. In actuality, you hardly notice it, but there is a very slight bulge. Included with the Voltair is a manually adjustable fan speed knob that takes a single slot above the first GTX 980. The fans (push-pull configuration) on the Voltair do spin up by themselves during load, but users can set minimum speed.
| Idle | 29 C |
| AIDA64 Stability Test | 74 C |
| Prime95, Maximum Heat, 16 threads | 99 C |
The above test was run using the Voltair's manually adjustable fan speed set to maximum, which hovered around 1,800rpm.
This tells us that while the Voltair TEC performed well at lower casual loads, it wasn't able to quite keep up at high-stress loads, which are not typical of normal day-to-day use. Even during games such as GTA5 and The Witcher 3, the Voltair held temperatures between 45 C and 47 C. The reason is that using a TEC requires exceptional heat dissipation to cool the hot side of the TEC. It's clear that as big as the Voltair's heatsink is, it's not efficient enough to keep the TEC operating at maximum efficiency. Some TEC configurations use water cooling as a more effective means keeping the temps down, and we would have loved to see that here as well.
Setup and configuration
V3's configuration of the Avenger is loaded. Three Nvidia GeForce GTX 980s is more than enough to run just about any game, and especially so at 4K. We'll take that. Subsystem wise, the Avenger was configured to use two Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSDs in RAID 0, and Windows was installed on the RAID map. The spare Western Digital Black 1TB drive sits as extra storage, but we would have liked something a little bigger.
The Avenger came with the 5960X overclocked to 4.3GHz while using stock voltage. This isn't unusual for such an overclock, as anything higher than 4.3GHz is where we usually see a need for a minor voltage bump. It's recommended that if you plan to overclock higher, you should be using adaptive voltage settings instead of fixed. The MSI X99S SLI Plus board's overclocking features are good, and its OC Genie does a good job of finding the highest possible stable overclock based on your settings and temperature. During Prime95 torture tests, the CPU became uncomfortably hot, but did not crash.
On the software side, V3 kept the OS setup clean. The necessary drivers were installed for all devices, and that was it. No antivirus trials, no bloatware, no excess of any kind. This is what we appreciate in a pre-built system.
The included Corsair HX1050 80+ Gold PSU handles a pegged load nicely, sitting at a total of 761W of power draw, so no complaints there. You won't be able to do 4-way SLI on the MSI X99S SLI Plus anyway, so beefier PSUs aren't needed. At load, the HX1050's fan does spin at maximum RPM, and with all fans roaring, the system's noise is definitely noticeable. During gaming or movies though, you won't hear it. The loudest part of the system was the Voltair cooler, so if you want to curb some noise, we suggest swapping out for a closed-loop cooler.
Benchmarks
So, how does the Avenger perform? We'll let the numbers speak for themselves. All benchmarks were run at 2160p Ultra HD resolutions, except for 3DMark Fire Strike and one instance of GTAV, which were benched at 1080p for reference against our Maximum PC Spring Turbo Build. Fire Strike Extreme was benched at 2160p.
Nvidia GeForce Drivers: 353.06
All benchmarks are on maxed settings with 4x AA.
| Benchmark | V3 Avenger Score | Turbo Build |
| 3DMark Fire Strike (1080p) | 26,411 | - |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (2160p) | 13,044 | - |
| Unigen Heaven 4.0 (fps) | 65 |
- |
| The Witcher 3 (fps) | 42.9 |
- |
| Grand Theft Auto V (1080p) (fps) | 80.4 | 47.2 |
| Grand Theft Auto V (2160p) (fps) | 50.7 | - |
| Crysis 3 (fps) | 45.1 | - |
| GRID Autosport (fps) | 92.9 |
- |
| Metro: Last Light (fps) | 54 |
- |
| Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (fps) | 105 |
66.8 |
| Crystal DiskMark (Sequential Read) | 1103 MB/s | 939.9 MB/s |
| Crystal DiskMark (4K Random Read) | 637.5 MB/s | - |
| Crystal DiskMark (4K Random Write) | 642.1 MB/s | - |
The Avenger performs admirably and we expected nothing less. When we received the Avenger, Nvidia hadn't announced the new GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but the difference between what we have here and the a 3-way Ti system is minimal at best. However, if you're configuring a system from V3, you'll be given the option of using the newer GTX 980 Ti.
Wrap-Up
There's nothing underdog about V3 Gaming, especially with a system like the Avenger. Packed to the gills with some of the best hardware, the brisk performance is of little surprise to us. We appreciate the attention to detail: clean wiring, clean operating system install, and good BIOS tweaks for overclocking. Some minor things stuck out at us, such as the 16GB of RAM and small storage drive, but none were show-stoppers. There's still plenty of room inside the chassis to hold more drives if you run out of space.
We went ahead and used PCPartPicker to build a system similar to the Avenger. The exact RAM and CPU cooler weren't found, so we used price-equivalent parts: Corsair's H110 AIO cooler, Corsair's Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 memory. Our price came out to: $3790.71. At the time the Avenger was sent to us, the pricing was a tad higher only because the GTX 980 was still priced at $699. But with the Ti out, the 980 is now sitting at $499.
All-in-all, the Avenger impressed with its smooth handling of all the latest titles. Some recent games like Witcher 3 won't be able to maintain a solid 60fps, but if you have a G-Sync monitor, it'll be a non-issue. Dial back a few minor settings and 60fps should be no problem at 4K.
From maximumpc
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