V3 Gaming PC Avenger

On the chance that its name gives you the wrong idea, you should know that the V3 Gaming PC Avenger ($4,599 direct) has nothing to do with the popular, recently released superhero movie. Given its powerful components, however, it seems designed to make you feel like a superhero yourself when you fire up your favorite 3D games. At that it succeeds?at least for a couple of years, you won't have to worry whether you're capable of handling whatever the newest and hottest title on the market is. But if you're longing for the fastest or flashiest system on the market, this isn't it; the Avenger gives you a solid combination of price and performance, but stops short of inspiring a deeply felt "wow."

Design and Features
The V3 Gaming PC Avenger may lack the ostentatious looks of many high-end gaming PCs, but it makes the most of what it does have. This starts with the Corsair Obsidian Series 650D case, a sharp-edged, sharp-looking model adorned with very little ornamentation: Nvidia and V3 logos on the windowed primary side panel, a giant Nvidia logo on the opposite one, and that's it. You certainly don't need much more, and the case is well enough outfitted that you likely won't care: There's plenty of interior space, and two easy-to-use door latches on either side panel give you frustration-free ways to access it.

Once you open the case, you're greeted with a bit more color by a green cold cathode ray lighting tube that spans the vertical interior (more Nvidia-focused subtlety, we'd wager). But you'll also find plenty of enticing components worthy of any serious gaming PC. Installed on the Asus P9X79 Pro motherboard is an Intel Core i7-3930K CPU, our favorite Sandy Bridge?Extreme model (because of its excellent performance-affordability profile), which has been overclocked from its natural 3.2GHz to a blistering 4.8GHz. That sort of treatment demands heavy cooling, and it's been provided by a closed-loop Asetek liquid cooler. The processor is paired with 16GB of RAM, distributed among four 4GB Corsair Vengeance DIMMs in the motherboard's eight expansion slots; you can install a maximum of 64GB in the P9X79 Pro (but to do so, you'll need to swap out the chips that are present?not that 16GB will become wimpy anytime soon). Providing hefty graphics firepower are three Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 video cards, which diminish expandability somewhat by blocking one PCI Express (PCIe) x8 slot and two PCIe x1 slots.

Of the four 5.25-inch drive bays on the Avenger, one is filled with a Samsung Blu-ray burner, a second with a multiformat card reader, and two are empty. The case technically has six 3.5-inch drive bays located below the 5.25-inch drives, but all are spoken for. There's a 2TB 7,200rpm hard drive in one, two 120GB Corsair Force solid-state drives (SSDs) in a RAID Level 0 configuration in two others, and the controller for the interior lighting takes up all of the bottom three; if you want to add more drives later, something will have to go first. Providing the juice for all this is a 1,200-watt Corsair AX1200 power supply.

Ports on the rear panel include six USB 2.0, four USB 3.0, two eSATA, Ethernet, S/PDIF optical out, and jacks for eight-channel audio. Also present are a dongle that adds Bluetooth 4.0 and a BIOS flashback button (used in conjunction with a specially marked USB 2.0 port) that gives you the freedom to tweak your system settings without fear that you'll render the computer unbootable. The front-panel port selection is hidden behind a drop-down door, and comprise two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, FireWire 800, and headphone and microphone jacks. Another nice addition is a 3.5-inch drive dock in the front section of the top panel; it's covered by a door as well to protect the SATA connectors inside, though we had consistent trouble closing that door all the way.

Our V3 Gaming PC Avenger also game with a peripheral pack to help round out your gaming experience. It includes two items by Razer, a Death Adder mouse and a Lycosa keyboard, as well as a Fatal1ty Professional Gaming Headset MK II; these are all basic, few-frills offerings, but if you need to augment your setup, they're a decent way to go. (If you already have pieces you're happy with, you can get the system itself for $100 less.) The Avenger's warranty covers parts for three years and labor for life, and provides lifetime technical support as well.

Performance
You rarely have to worry much about performance with a serious gaming machine, and that remains true of the V3 Gaming PC Avenger. It delivered dazzling results in all our productivity tests: 2 minutes 17 seconds to apply a dozen filters and effects in Adobe Photoshop CS5, 54 seconds to convert a video in Handbrake, and scores of 13.62 on CineBench R11.5 and 6,348 on Futuremark PCMark 7 respectively. But none of these was a record setter: The latest Origin Genesis (which was overclocked to 4.9GHz) surpassed the V3 in Photoshop (2:12), CineBench (14.23), and Handbrake (51 seconds); and the Editors' Choice Maingear Shift Super Stock delivered a stronger PCMark 7 score (6,501).

The one test in which the V3 set a new standard was the Entry preset on Futuremark 3DMark 11: Its 26,055 was well ahead that of the closest competitor (again the Maingear, with 24,337). But the V3 trailed in all other gaming tests, whether 3DMark 11's Extreme preset (the Genesis' 9,710 trumps the V3's 8,884), Lost Planet 2 (where the Maingear won at both 1,280 by 720 and 1,920 by 1,080, with 359 frames per second, or fps, and 232fps respectively), or Crysis (the Genesis won here, as well, with 131fps and 86fps at lower and higher resolutions).

Although the V3 Gaming PC Avenger costs less than the newest Maingear Shift Super Stock, we're letting the latter retain its Editors' Choice based on its superior gaming and productivity performance, stronger upgrade potential, and more innovative design in a more elaborate and compelling chassis. But if you don't want to shell out the extra money for those privileges, and you can live with less than all-consuming performance, the Avenger is a fine choice.

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