Avatar Gaming PC Gaming FX 6377OC Desktop (Black) (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

I bought this to replace an old desktop I used at home that finally died. I wanted something that would match the engineering system I use at work so that I could use some of my work programs on it. An engineering specific machine cost way more than I want to pay for a home machine. So I looked at gaming machines since they preform about the same functions as engineering rendering machines. Saw the Avatar model and it seemed to be a great value for the money. Specs and components were enough to handle my 3D rendering program. So I ordered one. When it arrived I hooked it up and nothing. It wouldn't boot up. Contacted Avatar customer service by e-mail and tried everything they suggested with no results. A little digging in the BIOS reveled that it wasn't seeing the hard drive. Figured that perhaps the HD had been damaged during shipping. So I sent it back for an exchange. When the replacement arrived same situation. E-mail exchanges with customer service didn't help. So I told them to call me on the phone to troubleshot the machine or I was going to send it back for a refund. A service rep called me and we went through a complete troubleshoting procedure. Nothing seemed to help. Finally after 45 minutes of trying everythig the service rep suggested that I try unplugging everything from the machine execpt the monitor. And what do you know, it booted up. Then I plugged in the keyboard and mouse and competed the set up with the service rep waiting on the line to make sure it completed properly. Got it completed and rebooted a couple of time to confirm everything was working. After a discussion with the service rep he came to the conculsion that the usb hub that I had my keyboard and mouse plugged into was somehow being seen as the main boot drive by the bios on start up and that is why the bios didn't see the HD when it started.During the first week the machine did do a couple of unplanned reboots as other buyers have mentioned. Since then it has been trouble free. I haven't tried to overclock or do any bios tweeking, so I don't know how it would react to that. In conclusion I would recommend this machine to someone who wants good performance for a low price. Only caveat being that you should have some experience building and tweeking computers since this is a barebones machine and will need some modification to make it good solid performer. Customer service from Avatar was very good once I was able to talk with a service rep on the phone. The e-mail support was only so-so. If I ever want or need another desktop computer in the future I will definitly consider purchasing another Avatar.

I didn't realize that it didn't come with a disk drive. I thought that was standard equipment, at least one disk drive. Most of what I can do can be downloaded but I can't even put the programs back on it came with should something happen to the system. This made me unhappy, but overall it's been a good system.

I have had it for almost a month now. There are some great things and some ok things about this computer. Let me start with what I am ok with.1. No dvd drive. I knew this going in, but all the divers etc. are on dvd or cds. If you need them, you have to install a drive or get an external one. I got an external one, it works just like one installed. You use up 2 usb slots though.2. The key board and mouse are not really good but usable. But you can see them on the picture.3. Windows 8.1 is harder to navigate then Windows 7. But with a little research you can make it act almost like 7. And note you can find the old games that came with Widows 7 (spider etc.) but they are not installed.4. No wifi, but a $10 usb one will do the trick. Not too many of these types computers come with it anyway.Now what I like1. The wiring inside the computer is very well organized. Most of them are tucked away in the right side panel.2. My ram is a single stick. Only have to buy one stick to get 16 gigs instead of two.3. What I have researched the processor and video card is a step up from the other computers at this price range. Not a big one but it is.4. For me this computer is quite. I don't notice it running sometimes.5. There is a lot of space inside the case, air flow is not be a problem.6. There are no add on junk programs. You can get to add what you want.All in all, this computer meets my needs. I had to add the wifi and DVD drive. Both of those cost me about $40. Just research the processor and video card, you can find out if it will meet your needs. You will be hard pressed to find any computer at this price to match this one. Good luck and happy gaming.7/13/14 Update. The pricing on this computer has gone up since my review. It is still going strong. I may change the video card once Witcher 3 comes out. If so I'll update it at that time.

Don't ever buy anything from Avatar. Bought this computer and it worked - for a while. Then it won't start (Windows 8 logo shows but the "spinner" doesn't), and it just stays frozen. It has a recovery disk, but the machine has no DVD or CD drive, and I tried three different external drives, and could not use the recovery disc. Copied the recovery disc to a thumb drive and tthat doesn't work either. Since in the event of a problem machine would have required using an external drive to do recovery (since it has no internal optical drive), Avatar should have disabled - or advised people to disable if they can't - the UEFI "feature" of not allowing boot from external drive, or included a recovery partition on the hard disk. So I had to spend $50 to ship the computer to Avatar, and when I get it back they did nothing, it is unchanged and still does not start Windows.Avoid Avatar like the plague that they are.