"This is by far the best company I’ve happened upon. They delivered my order 100% functional unlike many other custombuilt computer retailers out there.

1. The price is not cheep but not unreasonable either.
2. The processing time was over a month for me, probably due to the holidays. If you are in a hurry to replace a broken computer, this is not the store for you. I personally was in no hurry and much preferred that my computer arrive late but working than the competitors out there that deliver within two weeks but the computer arrives only 90% functional or damaged due to shipping and needs to be sent back and forth(be warned, some companies will just send you replacement parts expecting you to be able to clean up the mess they left inside your computer).
This company packs their product well, unlike the other companies that expect double boxing will solve everything. Be prepared to have to open your computer to remove the packing material inside before you power it on. If you are one of those anxious people that expect the computer to arrive ready to go, slow down and read the instructions first or order from elsewhere.
3. There was no need to activate the OS for my order but I did have to manually update a few drivers(a few companies out there do provide you with the latest drivers preinstalled and tested but that convenience is not a biggy for me).
4. This company’s tech support and customer support is all done through their website’s text messaging system(you get e-mail notification of new messages). This cuts out a good deal of hassle from having to put up with rude, verbally abusive, overworked and frustrated tech support people (not to mention the ones that can’t speak comprehensibly, people that don’t pick up the phone, respond to voice messages or e-mails in a timely fashion, or work other than normal business hours, as well as other communication and language barriers). I don’t know, maybe avadirect’s tech support people are also frustrated and overworked but at least they don’t pass on their negativity to their customers. This company’s tech support was kind enough to spend time explaining things to me and put up with my lack of technical knowledge.
5. This company’s customer service is also honest, they will notify you in advance of making any changes to your order and ask for your consent. Plus if you made a mistake in the initial order, they will kindly point out your foolishness instead of just being happy to take your money letting you suffer the consequences of your inexperience.
I’ll definitely be happy to do business with them again.

Dell: solid computers but horrible tech support and customer service (not much improvement in the last ten years of business with them. If anything, they are headed in the wrong direction)
HP: courteous and friendly tech support but sold me parts before they made drivers for it :/ It took them a whole year to get my laptop fully functional, but at least they were willing and had the patience to spend a whole year trouble shooting with me instead of just leaving me hanging indefinitely or trying to wait for the warranty to expire. (Unlike Dell, HP’s trend is towards improvement so I may try them again in a few years)
Apple: very solid computers and excellent customer support but too expensive. (their sales people sometimes are a bit secretive not telling you all the details on what you are buying before you buy, but apple is generally trustworthy in my book.)
Puget: too expensive
ComputerLX aka AllPCZone: dishonest, tech support tries to push the blame on the customer for everything instead of spending time to diagnose the problem first, also gave me outdated cheaper parts than what I paid for.
Acer: cheap, works, nice but not always practical(you get what you order) Now I mainly only buy monitors and some other parts from them since they don’t carry computers that fit my current needs.

Other companies I simply do not wish to mention or have too little experience with to be constructive"

"Let me preface this with I would not hesitate to order from AVA Direct again.
It was easy to order my notebook computer online. I contacted AVA Direct by phone to ask some questions about some of the parts I wanted in my notebook and they were able to answer those questions and finish my order over the phone. The processing was a little slow with no updates to let me know what was going on with my order, I called and emailed to find out what was happening and they responded quickly and kept me up to date after that. I got my notebook and found that an optional part was missing (turbo memory card) and contacted my sales representative and all was handled quickly and professionally."

"I'd heard of AVA direct from a few of the people I play on line games with. I only wish I had gone to them as my first choice rather than my second; it would have saved me a lot of frustration.

First let me say how easy it was to order from the website, and even though the range of options available can be confusing, rest assured AVA will contact you if you've configured something wrong.

I was replacing a 5 year old machine that had outlived its useful gaming life, it just couldn't run what I was playing these days at anything but the lowest settings. That just wasn't cutting it anymore.

The system I ended up ordering was an INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, system in a full tower Antec case with 6 gig of ram and a Geoforce GTX 280 video card.

To say that I am pleased with the system would be an understatement. It's run everything I've tried on it seamlessly. I've purposely waited a couple of weeks to post a review so I could make sure I had some accurate stats to base one on. I.E. meaning I was waiting to see if anything broke! :)

The workmanship appears to be top notch, nothing rattles, nothing loose, and everything ran fine right from the first boot up.

The customer service also surprised me. It was far and away amongst the best of any computer dealer I've dealt with. Misha was a big help as was everyone else. Unlike a lot of people, this company is local to me, so I not only got a system from them but got a chance to meet some of the staff when I went to pick it up.

At any rate, I know everyone's experiences are different, but for mine, I'm quite happy and would recommend Ava to anyone that asks.


"

"I was very satisfied they were very professional and listened to any my request.
"

"The x5482 CPU, that I was shopping for crazy, was not obtainable by any online dealer that I tried since the item was discontinued by Intel. I appreciate AVADirect effort, special thanks go to Misha, Chris and Denis for their extended effort in procuring this CPU. If it would not be obtained in US, they were ready to order from overseas, which is rare to see such a effort among any online dealer I contacted (at least 15 or so from pricegrabber). Most of them dropped the ball hence it would not be obtainable in the domestic market. The transaction with AVA Direct was swift, the attention to invoice/order inquiries via email fast, and assuring. The shipment was packaged secure and very fast. I was given a leed time of a month or more to get this item, and I received it in less than a week. All in all, my experience with AVA Direct surpassed my expectations from an online dealer. I will be happy to stop by here again...."

"Misha and his team at AVA worked to meet our rather stringent requirements for a Core i7 System. They went through multiple builds with different hardware configurations to achieve a stable, high-end system. Even after a few Post-Delivery hardware failures they worked with us to resolve these issues, and RMA'ed new Hardware overnight to correct them.
-Ryan"

"If you love good workmanship, need some nurturing about the latest computer spec's, don't care to load your own parts and software (like me), or just want a candy store rush when you visit their website, AVADirect is where to go.

My new PC is by far the best assembly of software and hardware I've ever had. The wiring internally is first class. The equipment, hardware and software are all the latest and greatest. The ability to speak to a reliable and knowledgeable sales rep (my aid was via Joe Mundy), while not a necessity, is a huge bonus.

There is no better PC builder around. Monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and pc case almost fell together. Everything worked right out of the box. No complaints what-so-ever.

The setup is three months old, and performs flawlessly. Thanks again to AVADirect and Joe Mundy."

"I have been using AVA Direct for quite some time now... I have ordered there 3 notebooks and 1 HTPC, and the service has been always exceptional. What I prefer about AVA is that there is always a person who you can talk to (Misha) who will take personal interest in your questions and problems and actually follow through to their solutions. "

"I have had a great experience ordering from AVADirect. In my initial review of available vendors who could build my new Tri-SLI killer gaming rig, I could only come up with two that had consistently good ratings on this website. Of those two, AVADirect had the advantage in terms of customization and variety of componentry. What is more is that they know the nuances of their inventory and if they don't know the answer to a question, it is not long in coming by email or reply phone call.....and this is so without fail and no matter how many question you have to shoot at them. I specifically needed my computer for gaming, but it had to be as quiet as possible because of household constraints. They were willing to do a test build and see how loud my system was with air cooling before deciding whether or not I needed to go liquid cooling so as to avoid extra unnecessary cost. Kudos for that. AFter building my system, they even allowed for last minute componentry switches on the day the system was supposed to ship....technology changes rapidly, but it didn't matter when I ordered through AVADirect because even this late in the process, changes could still be made. It led to an expected further slight delay in my system shipping out to me, but I was okay with that. You see...I had initially ordered a quad core system and the core i7 architecture came out literally days before my system shipped. They swapped out the motherboard, memory and processor....and despite all of this, there was little to no difference in the final price of my build. How often could one expect to have that happen?

When I got my system, it was expertly double boxed and very well protected. On boot up, everything worked beautifully as expected. This beast is fast and with things like blu-ray and more new tech to play with, this machine has kept me busy. Crysis at very high settings on all effects at 1900 x 1200 with no framerate drops is something to see, but I digress.

The few calls I have put in to their service line have been quickly answered and their knowledge of this build has been quick to surface. For example, they knew to make sure I had this computer plugged into a relatively sparsely used circuit in my house because of the amount of power drawn by the 1200W power supply used to power the Tri SLI configuration. Joe and Chris Mundy, as well as Matt Slagle are all on the ball. Special hats off to Misha Troshin who also makes decisions at a higher level in the company that take into account the happiness of his consumer base. AVADirect has my loyalty for a job well done. If I need another computer down the line, I know where I will look first. "

"The computer that I bought from AVA Direct was an ASUS Z97V Core™2 Duo Performance Notebook
it has
2.53 GHz
4GB RAM
200GB HHard Drive
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9650M GT 1GB
I have had no problems with my computer and I have no complaints about the customer support. They were very helpful and The price was perfect for my budget.
"

"I had a small office to upgrade of 8 Computers. AVADirect had exactly what I was looking for, and was easy to work with. I ordered the machines in early December, and needed them before the end of the month. Joe Mundy in sales helped me from begging to end with the order. Ordering these computers I assumed there would be hiccups, and there were. Joe kept me informed of them and the solutions they were doing. He knew I need the bulk of the order by the end of the year and send me 7 of the 8 which was fine with me. I received the 8th machine the other day, and got a follow up call to make sure it had arrived.

One of my co-workers was so impressed with his new computer at work he bought a laptop for his mother from AVADirect, and was really impressed with the amount of options, and price from AVADirect. When it comes time for a new computer at my home, AVADirect will be the first ones I contact.
"

"I actually bought 2 identical i7 940 based desktop systems (one for myself and one for my father). I did about a month of research before buying from AVA Direct and determined that a comparable system from another vendor would cost ~$900 more and that building one myself would cost almost the exact same amount but minus the experience with which components play nice-nice together, testing, warranty and support. We built the systems online but with excellent phone help from Joe Mundy. We were a little annoyed that it took 2 weeks to ship (and a couple extra days for the other due to an error caught during testing), but it was as promised and exceedingly well packed. I actually really appreciate that they reuse the case and motherboard boxes to pack it- it's a green and very practical approach. They include every manual and spare part, carefully packed and bagged. It was nice not to have endless cardboard and foam glossy guides to dig through. Once set up everything worked perfectly. The system screams, even with Vista (64-bit Home Premium), and dual 1080p monitors driven off a superclocked 9800 GTX+. Joe called afterward to check that all went well.. don't get that when you buy a Dell! I will definitely recommend AVA Direct to others."

"Further to extensive research to find a competitively priced custom gaming rig, I settled on AVADirect, further to high ratings here at reseller ratings, in trusting them to build my dream machine at a cost of over $5000.

some of the specs include:

INTEL, Core™ i7-965 Extreme Quad-Core (overclocked) processor, 3.2GHz
12GB RAM
one 1.5TB (RAID) HD & another 1 TB (RAID) hard drive
eVGA, GeForce GTX 280 SSC, GTX 280 648MHz, 1GB video card
windows vista ultimate (64 bit)
1200 watt power supply
Blu-ray rewriter

etc

to cut a long story short- the truth is it took more than 7 weeks to receive my system- partly due to the feedback that some challenges were encountered in overheating and a hard drive malfunctioning and also partly due to the fact that the Intel i7 technology had just been released and it was a new learning curve for everyone involved- even though it was predicted on purchase it would take 3 weeks the actual time it took was acceptable considering the system price was still pretty good value & as difficult it was to remain patient whilst I waited much longer than expected- I certainly valued AVA taking their time to iron out the bugs and send me a machine in 'top shape'-

throughout the build/test process and after receiving- the staff (Joseph Mundy in sales and Chris Mundy in the tech support department) demonstrated great professionalism, communication & patience with my own learning curve and I was kept well informed, largely by email of the progress of my machine's build & testing


Further to receiving my system - there were some problems with my machine - including being unable to shut it down, restart or put into stand by without a blue screen crash - however, Chris Mundy, in the tech department demonstrated great resolve & technical knowledge in getting my system up & running as normal and was very patient in the process over the phone- it took a couple of days to troubleshoot, whilst I chose to reinstall the OS as it was registered in the wrong name- in the end it turned out the Vista disk didn't come with SP1 and also it seems that the usb driver srelated to my alpha cool LCD was causing the blue screen crashes- so not really AVA's fault- and my system appears to be very fast & stable- we did set the machine to factory default (ie. removed overclocking) in case any problems were related to overclocking- have since put the overclock back with no problems

naturally the initial problem of the blue screen crashing was dissapointing after such a long wait and large outlay of money- however this was not directly AVA's fault- more of a Vista issue (just goes to prove though that if one gets a fault, doesn't necessarily mean it's the desktop builder) -waiting to get the support took further patience, but once I got it they did a great job in helping me solve my problems, thus so far

the tech support system is based on a 'leave a message and they'll get back to you once they're free' status- which is acceptable, considering the prices and it being a small company & Chris does a great job in having a calm knowledgable voice to help guide through any technical difficulties- calls are only made during normal business hours 10 am-6pm mon- Fri only - they do have a remote desktop service and can see/operate your computer over the web which helps tremendously as well- and this made a huge difference

Despite the technical difficulties I faced from the start- overrall my experience with AVA has been worth my time and largely satisfied with their service- I got a great system for a great price and though I had to be very patient to get it to where I wanted it to be (and spending quite some time breaking through a number of technical challenges- largely related to VIsta and not whhat AVA put together), it was worth the wait and would definitely recommend hiring their services and would buy from them again myself
"

"Ok I am just your average working mom with three grown sons, which is why I am thrilled that one of them is a computer-game-programming-something-or-other in Austin. He is the one who directed me to AVA. (Actually he is going to buy a system too, but wanted me to be the guinea pig before HE purchased)

So he asked me a bunch of questions about what I needed (most of which I didn't understand) and then built me a nice, modestnotebook computer. We ordered it and received it without incident. (There was ashort delay due to a backorder of the "popular RAM" we had chosen.)

Size, power, capabilities are all fine. Major glitch though. The keyboard is faulty. I have had many computers over the past 20 years, and understand that there is a period of adjustmentto get used to anew one, but this is beyond that usual nuance. The two major problems are
1. the spacebar "sticks" in a particular area (approxiamtely one inch from the right side) about 85% of the time
2. the mousetouchpad activates when you don't even touch it.

Now the fact that I have to double click aspacebar periodically is bad enough, but think about typing along and then looking up at what you typed only to find that the touchpad caused the curser to "jump" to the last place it was clicked. It is hard to describe, but the result is that you wind up with phrases of a sentence interposed between previously typed sentences. I spend most of my time correcting my typing, dragging and dropping segments of writing back to where it should be. VERY DISTRESSING!!!!!

My husband and I haveleft several messages about this and have spoken to Chris. His first two suggestions didn't resolve the issue. (go to the Control Panel and adjust the mousespeed or to disable the touchpad!) Adjusting the speed of the mousedidn't do a thing for the problem (and I tried all the options). As for disabling the touchpad, I don't think I should have to dowithout a feature that is valuable because of a faulty keyboard.

Stay tuned for updates tosee how they handle this problem. I purposely left the incorrect spaces inmy typing above to demonstrate how often the spacebarmisses. (However, it has taken me over 45 minutes to type this due to constantly correcting the curser jumps.)

Ok. Here we are 1/30 and I have just received my computer back today. So far it seems as though the spacebar sticking problem is resolved. However the situation with the mouse touchpad is still an issue although I am constantly watching to make sure I don't accidently touch it at all. It would be nice if they had a couple of keyboards to choose from.

I must say that the customer service with this company is fabulous. They are very attentive and willing to listen. That said, unless they redesign their keyboard, I won't purchase in the future, for what it's worth. "

"I was going to buy from one of the "Big Box" computer stores but came across a review for AVA. I did not know exactly what I wanted but I knew certain things I HAD to have. This posed a problem when I looked at the big box stores. They could not match up my needs.

When I started lurking at the AVA site I was amazed at the endless combinations I could put into a computer. Now This did pose 1 problem. It took me about a month to finally decide. I mean my goodness there is so much to choose from. Well I fianally made the purchase, there was an issue with a cpu cooling fan not fitting, Joseph called and said they would find one that matched. Packing was great, I love having it shipped in the case box. (Nice if I ever have to send it in) I have had it for almost a year now and no issues. It performs great, Looks great. They even handled my request to have 1 HD for the OS and 1 HD for storage. I also dual booted my pc just in case.

I would buy from them again in a heartbeat.

This is the combination I put together

Antec nine hundred case
Core 2 duo E8500 OC to 3.8ghz
Nvidia 8800 gt Superclocked
4 gb 1066 ram
1 500 GB hard drive (Dual OS XP & Vista Ultamate)
1 500 GB hard drive Storage
650 Watt power supply
Coolermaster cpu cooler.
I hooked that all to my 27" Lcd and I love it!"