Steiger Dynamics Maven Pure Custom PC Review: Game In Silence

[dovah-chan]

A very attractive case and a desirable sound output (aka none)

This thing puts my R4 to shame ;___ ;

Also what fans are being used in this case? I'm sure you could make this thing even more quiet with some gentle typhoons thrown in versus the stock top 140/120mm fan. Maybe for the side 92mm fans you could put in some classy NF-B9's?

 

[rundmcarlson]

The article implies replacing your cable box in the first paragraph but never clarifies. As far as I am aware, there are no PC parts that will allow you to watch cable without a proprietary converter box. I know digital tv adapters exist but I am fairly certain cable companies encrypt the signal now so that you have to use their boxes on every tv (they are tiny and given out for free).

Id be interested if something exists to eliminate the box, or if there is a relatively cheap passthrough card I can install to play the stream through the pc for dvr and custom guide purposes.

 

[Crashman]

The article implies replacing your cable box in the first paragraph but never clarifies. As far as I am aware, there are no PC parts that will allow you to watch cable without a proprietary converter box. I know digital tv adapters exist but I am fairly certain cable companies encrypt the signal now so that you have to use their boxes on every tv (they are tiny and given out for free).

Id be interested if something exists to eliminate the box, or if there is a relatively cheap passthrough card I can install to play the stream through the pc for dvr and custom guide purposes.

I actually have CableCard on my PC, along with the external adapter for on-demand that I actually never hooked up. And yes, Steiger Dynamics offers the tuner, either as a PCIe card or a network device.

I recommend the network device, because both of these tuners support six simultaneous channels, but only the network device can support multiple viewers: The same company that makes the card and the network device sells extension boxes to connect to your other TVs, or you can access the tuner from other Windows Media Center PCs. I got the PCIe card, and found out that streaming from your PC to the network is broken in Windows 8. Since the network device is already on the network, this isn't a problem.

But then, if you get the network version of the tuner, you have another box right? At least it doesn't need to be in the same room as the PC you're using to buffer/record its signal. Still, if you're going solo, the PCIe card IS a configuration option from Steiger Dynamics.

 

[The Indomitable]

I just want the case.

 

[RedJaron]

Very intriguing product here. A lot of the nay-sayers need to realize this isn't just a HTPC. This is designed to also play games at 1080p on high details. And amazingly enough it can do it on nary a whisper.

Yes, $2500 is steep. No two ways about it. But go to their site and check the other configurations you can get. A 4790K + 970 4GB + 8GB RAM is $1700. That's not much more than you'd pay building it yourself. For one machine that can replace your gaming PC and your cable box and your media server and your XB1/PS4, that's not a bad deal. Just because you may not want one doesn't mean there isn't a market for it or that it isn't an impressive system in its own right.

 

[fkr]

now get a gtx 980 in there and also a 42-48" 4k 5ms monitor and we are good to go.

 

[palladin9479]

I'll throw in my opinion on this as I'm part of the group these guys are marketing to. I'm a huge proponent of silent / quiet (pure silence is a bit overkill) computing solutions in the living room because when your using an expensive high quality sound system, ambient noise and immersion matters. To this end I've been recommending APU's and other low power solutions precisely because the low power in = low thermal energy that needs to be dissipated = less total airflow required. Also since we're talking an actual living space, somewhere your expected to host company, style absolutely matters, it can't look like something that belongs in my lab.

After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

Anyhow decent product, the styling is really nice. You can drop that in a living room and provided the colors don't clash with what you already have it will fit in and match a modern style. It is a bit big and clunky though, would be best if it was installed in a standard stereo stand or possibly a custom enclosure built into the environment.

To those thinking about why you want near-silence for "gaming" in your living room, it's because ambient fan noise really destroys immersion. It's one of those things you don't even notice or think about until you've experienced a quiet environment. You can really get into the zone, having a blast and just enjoying stuff. Environmental acoustic properties play a huge part in how you experience and enjoy something, and so little time is given to explaining that on enthusiast sites.

 

[RedJaron]

After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.

 

[Crashman]

After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.

The builder might just show up to explain some of his techniques

 

[cmi86]

I think the whole absolute silence thing is really only valued by diehard audiophiles. I have a decently powerful gaming/media rig in my living room and even under load its barely audible, never even close to loud enough to be a problem. It cost maybe $600 bucks.

 

[STEIGERDYNAMICS]

Thank you all for the great comments and constructive criticism. Sorry for getting in so late:

I think it still sacrifices too much to try to be all things in one; if you want a quiet media centre PC then you can't beat an Akasa Euler case with a suitable Haswell processor. With no moving parts besides an HDD (not even that if you use an SSD) you can build a totally silent system that can easily handle modern media centre demands (streaming/downloadable HD content with full HDMI 1080p output with HD audio). If you want to do gaming as well then you can built a separate system and stream to the media centre (you could even install SteamOS for that purpose), with a gaming machine in another room you can still have total silence provided your network is up to the task, but without sacrificing performance. If having the TV tuner is a must then there are USB adapter cables that work just fine, rather than the bulkier boxes; you can even actually fit some PCI cards inside the Akasa Euler if you only have an mSATA drive and the card's the right shape, though that requires some cutting.

The idea (and beauty) of our systems is that you do not need anything else and that it can do all in one without compromise. Our custom liquid cooled LEET Living Room PCs can even do up to Quad-SLI TITAN Zs with an overclocked i7-5960X. And the system is whisper-quiet in idle. Basically you have the option to fully replace your desktop PC (if you want to do your stuff from the sofa - it works great with our Couchmaster lapdesk) and every single box in your living room. I am not saying that it's the most economical way if you already have a plethora of devices for varies functions - but it is the most elegant way.

I think the noise tests should have included another typical htpc situation and that is inside an enclosed television cabinet because that is quite often the situation you put your htpc in, limited room to breathe.

It strongly depends on the cabinet. If one of the sides or the rear is open (most cabinets) there wont be any noticable difference to what was measured in the article. If it's completely closed (which we explicitly do not recommend using with our systems) the overall inside temperature will rise and consequently trigger higher fan rpms. This is however strongly dependant on system specifications and we talk this through with every single customer.

No support for M-Discs??? Obsolete already?

The slim slot-in BR drives we are using in the MAVEN unfortunately have no M-DISC support. As far as we know there is no such drive on the market supporting it. However, our full-size optical drives in the LEET model all fully support M-DISC:

A very attractive case and a desirable sound output (aka none)

This thing puts my R4 to shame ;___ ;

Also what fans are being used in this case? I'm sure you could make this thing even more quiet with some gentle typhoons thrown in versus the stock top 140/120mm fan. Maybe for the side 92mm fans you could put in some classy NF-B9's?

Stock fans of any pre-sealed custum liquid cooling solution are completely unusable in our case. We are using Gentle Typhoon (if available) or similarly high-quality high-static-pressure fans for our systems. This is combined with a UEFI fan curve which is customized and tested for every single system to provide maximum idle and full load quietness while keeping all temps well within specs. Customizing this is necessary since every CPU (especially when overclocked) is different in terms of efficiency. For our highest-end Quad-SLI LEET systems, where we need to go up to 1800 rpm on full load, we get custom UEFIs from Asus which allow us to set fan curves with extreme ranges.

I just want the case.

We do sell it unoficially Please send us an email or live chat message. Contact info on our website.

 

[STEIGERDYNAMICS]

After looking it over I have a few comments. Firstly is the size, It's about the same size as a high quality professional receiver. This can be a good and bad thing, good because it can fit inside standard stereo cabinets, bad because if you already have a receiver then this will stand out unless it's color matched, and even then maybe not. This is important because this isn't replacing a high quality receiver, it doesn't have anywhere near enough juice and the onboard DSP are going to have cross talk and other EMR disturbances from being so close to other high frequency bus's. So you will likely have to connect this device to the receiver, either using direct audio jacks, HDMI or SPDIFF. That's probably the only thing missing from this article, a proper review of the audio connection options in a real world configuration (receiver + 7.1 or 5.1 home theater configuration).

I'm also very interested in the graphics card, the closed loop cooler will do magic for the CPU's cooling requirement but that 50~75w of cooling is nothing compared to what that dGPU is going to need. It looks like it's using a half PCIe slot for the exhaust which is no where near enough surface area, your going to have to run the fan at higher RPMs to cool that card in prolonged sessions. This is my single biggest complaint in how we currently do dGPUs, the slot design was never intended to tackle high energy dissipation. Maybe a closed loop integrated cooling system that handles both dGPU and CPU.

You can get this in both silver and black. Between those two, color matching shouldn't be a big issue with the vast majority of receivers out there.

As for the audio capabilities, you've got your typical mboard connectors of multi-channel analog, fiber optic, and HDMI. Both the Asus Z boards offered also have DTS Connect, so you can get DTS 5.1 from most games over the fiber. Audio over the HDMI will depend on the GPU since you're not going to use the mboard's jack. For best audio compatibility in games, I'd say use the multi-channel. But I'd switch to HDMI audio when watching media.

I also was wondering why no CLC on the GPU. Then again, if Crash says he had a hard time measuring noise from this thing more than 3 feet away, I'm inclined to believe that. Makes me curious how they silenced the 770.

The builder might just show up to explain some of his techniques

The MAVEN case, due to its relatively compact size, does not allow for GPU custom liquid cooling. Our LEET chassis fully supports it. Depending on the chosen specs, CLC might be overkill though. We are testing pretty much all graphics cards on the market and only use the quietest. If we are not happy we will customize fan curves on the OS level. We recommend the LEET with CLC for all SLI configurations. One graphics card will usually stay quiet enough so CLC is not needed.

As for the color, as mentioned above, we offer everything in silver and black, perfectly color matching 99% of AVRs out there. If we feel that another color is necessary (and can be done with anodizing), we will certainly offer that too.

For best audio results, we recommend using HDMI (standard) to a receiver. Only HDMI allows digital bitstreamed lossless TrueHD/dts-master 7.1 or higher (ATMOS is making inroads into the living room). We are working with our customers to get the best audio and video quality for their respective setup. Alternative standard audio options would be jacks (up to 5.1 analog) or optical SPDI/F (up to 5.1 analog). Optionally, we offer high-end analog sound cards (up to 7.1 RCA) or 32-channel professional.

 

[RedJaron]

For best audio results, we recommend using HDMI (standard) to a receiver. Only HDMI allows digital bitstreamed lossless TrueHD/dts-master 7.1 or higher (ATMOS is making inroads into the living room). We are working with our customers to get the best audio and video quality for their respective setup. Alternative standard audio options would be jacks (up to 5.1 analog) or optical SPDI/F (up to 5.1 analog). Optionally, we offer high-end analog sound cards (up to 7.1 RCA) or 32-channel professional.

I'm not aware of any games that can output DTS-Master, TrueHD, or similar audio. The vast majority use multichannel LPCM. That's why I said for gaming you'd need to patch the multichannel outs on the mboard to the receiver and use HDMI for media like DVDs and Blu-rays.