maingear

Maingear introduces clean-lined Shift gaming PC

Boutique gaming PC vendor Maingear launched a brand new full tower PC Monday morning. The all-steel aluminum-wrapped, steel-skeletoned Shift takes a page from last year's limited-edition Voodoo Omen desktop by rotating the motherboard 90 degrees clockwise, facing the ports you normally find on the back panel up on the top of the system instead. The result, Maingear says, is improved heat management, as the design works with heat's natural tendency to rise.

Regardless of the heat benefits, (we've seen plenty of PCs work just fine with a traditional layout), the result of the rotated motherboard clearly makes an impact on the look and feel of the Shift. With monitor and peripheral cables plugged in to the top and hidden under a removable, vented cover, both the front and the back of the system cut a clean profile.

(More pics and starting price after the jump.)… Read more

Maingear's Pulse too little, too late

We finally posted our review of Maingear's power-efficient Pulse gaming PC and we're sad to say that it didn't deliver the system we hoped for. We do give Maingear credit for trying to build on the greenified gaming idea started by HP's Firebird, but efficient components apparently haven't kept pace with the general trend of falling hardware prices. That means the Pulse sacrifices too much performance compared with a standard mainstream gaming PC in the same price range.

Our power testing found that the Pulse is indeed energy efficient. It actually consumed less power than … Read more

Maingear's SFF Pulse gaming PC arrives

We're prepping this system for testing as I type this, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a few shots of the Maingear Pulse, which showed up in the lab an hour ago.

First, this thing is tiny. It comes in at 11.25 inches high, 7.5 inches wide, and 8.25 inches deep. Essentially the Pulse looks like one of Shuttle's smaller small form factor systems turned on its end.

Unlike the typical SFF gaming box, Maingear is gunning for the same combination of 3D graphics horsepower and power efficiency that HP showed off … Read more

High-end desktop power test reveals hidden costs of PC gaming

If you're a PC gamer, you might willingly pay $15 a month to stomp around the World of Warcraft. What if we also told you that depending on your rig and daily play time, you might also be paying a hidden fee of $10 or more a month to play even single-player PC games?

After our debut round of all-in-one PC power efficiency results, we've had a chance to test the power consumption of a few other kinds of desktops. The most intriguing system so far has been a $3,600 gaming desktop from Digital Storm.

It's … Read more

Shuttle XPC smaller, pricier than competition

Even if we don't love Shuttle's XPC H7 5800 gaming system, we have to give Shuttle credit for offering a smaller small form factor desktop than its boutique competition.

We found in our review that a Core i7 CPU and a dual-chip GeForce 285 GTX card make this Shuttle system a respectable gamer, but this configuration will cost you $250 more than the same specifications in a Falcon Northwest FragBox 2, and $600 more than an X-Cube from Maingear. Shuttle also has no 64-bit Vista option, which means if you opt for the 6GB of RAM, as we … Read more

AVADirect continues small gaming PC trend

We can't help but feel a little responsible for AVADirect's newly announced GT3 Custom Gaming PCs.

A few months back, we linked to a blog post from Ed Borden highlighting GTR Tech's seemingly ignored GT3 slim tower desktop case as a 2-year-old precursor to HP's Firebird. Following that post, we heard from an enthusiastic Misha Troshin, CMO of AVADirect, informing us of his intention to sign up with GTR Tech for the GT3.

A chief benefit of the GT3 is that it offers a slim profile, but it also lets you add a full-size graphics card. … Read more

Maingear gives power-efficient game PCs a Pulse

Update: This post has been corrected to indicate the proper graphics chip in the Pulse's default $799 configuration.

We don't apologize for liking HP's Firebird gaming PC a bit more than other review sites. If you can accept that it lacks a graphics upgrade path, HP's small, power-efficient desktop is both an attractive and capable gamer aimed at general consumers. But what if you could buy a small PC with a similar eye on efficiency, that also allowed you to add a full-size 3D card? If that sounds appealing, you may want to check out Maingear's new Pulse, which goes on sale later Thursday.

Maingear built the Pulse around Nvidia's Ion integrated graphics chip platform. We've seen other Ion-based systems, most notably paired with Intel's Atom CPU in a few Netbooks, and also matched with Intel's Core 2 Duo in Apple's latest Mac Mini. But the Pulse is the first Ion-based PC to offer a full graphics card upgrade path, by way of a full-size 16x PCI Express 2.0 slot. That gives the Pulse an advantage over the Firebird, which had an essentially fixed pair of Nvidia laptop chips.

The Pulse chassis measures roughly 11 inches high, with an 8x8-inch footprint. That makes it about 2 inches wider than the Firebird (to accommodate the full-size 3D card), but 11 inches shorter, and almost 10 inches less deep. For comparison, the Mac Mini has a 6x6 footprint, but it's only 2 inches high.

The basic Pulse starts at $799, which gets you only an embedded GeForce 9300 graphics chip, along with a fast 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 CPU, HDMI and eSATA outputs, 802.11b/g wireless, and a 300-watt power supply. True to its roots, Maingear will offer all kinds of upgrade options for the Pulse, including special low-power quad-core Intel CPUs and a variety of low-power "Eco"-model Nvidia cards, up to a 1GB GeForce 9800 GT. That card will let you play pretty much any PC game on the market right now, with speed and decent image quality.

It's tempting to slap the Firebird-killer tag on the Pulse, but HP seems to have reduced the Firebird's retail profile, which makes it easier for the Pulse to broaden its appeal.… Read more

Review: Maingear's high-end, tri-SLI Ephex gaming PC

It used to be that spending more than $5,000 or $6,000 on a high-end gaming PC returned very little in the way of actual performance. However, with Intel's pricey solid-state hard drives tearing up performance charts, suddenly dropping $8,000-plus on a performance PC will actually get you a noticeable speed benefit on a wide variety of applications.

It's mostly for that reason that we let Falcon Northwest submit an $8,000 Mach V last November, and it's why we agreed to let Maingear send us its three-way SLI-equipped Ephex gaming desktop, which we posted … Read more

AMD introduces Dragon PC gaming platform and new Phenom II CPUs

As the only vendor currently producing CPUs, GPUs, and motherboard chipsets, AMD is uniquely positioned to market its entire product line as a unified PC gaming platform. It began this effort last year with its Spider platform (the original Phenom X4, Radeon HD 3000-series CPUs, and its 700-series chipsets), and with today's launch of its new Phenom II desktop chips, AMD also announced its new Dragon platform. Dragon marries Phenom II with the Radeon HD 4800-line of 3D cards and AMD's 790-series chipsets into a complete, AMD-made gaming PC.

The big news with Dragon is really the Phenom II chips. Available as the 3.0GHz Phenom II X4 940 and the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920, these new quad-core CPUs are AMD's first 45-nanometer desktop processors, and they finally bring AMD in line with Intel's 45-nano manufacturing process, used in its Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core i7 chips.

Core i7 PCs on sale from Dell, Gateway, others

We reviewed Intel's new Core i7 CPU already, as well as two desktops with the chip inside, but today is the first day you can actually make a Core i7 purchase. Dell has the best starting bid, with a deal on its Studio XPS with a Core i7 920 chip and a 20-inch LCD for $999. Gateway's FX 6800-01e is also impressive, coming in at $1,249 for a Core i7 920 in a PC that can accommodate two 3D cards. Look for the Gateway review this evening, with a review of a more expensive version of the … Read more