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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.

Maingear's new Shift gaming PC

(Credit: Maingear)

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.)

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.

Maingear's small form factor Pulse gaming PC

(Credit: CNET/Sarah Tew)

Our power testing found that the Pulse is indeed energy efficient. It actually consumed less power than HP's Firebird, and offers faster performance both in games and in standard applications. When the $2,100 Firebird 803 came out in February, however, its performance kept pace with standard desktops, outgunning both a $1,500 Dell, and even on some tests Acer's $2,000 or so Predator.

Unfortunately for the $1,300 Pulse, Asus introduced a highly competitive $1,200 gaming tower, and the little Maingear system just can't keep up. You can perhaps ask regular consumers to sacrifice performance for power savings, but good luck making that suggestion to a PC gamer.

We don't think all is lost for the Pulse. Its default $799 configuration, for example, looks awfully promising as a small home media box (a Blu-ray drive at this price would be nice, though). And our hope is that as AMD, Intel, and Nvidia keep revving their various components, we'll see power efficiency gains with less of a performance hit. As that gap narrows, the Pulse and systems like it will have a stronger argument.

Read our review of the Maingear Pulse.

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.

The Maingear Pulse SFF gaming PC

(Credit: CNET/Sarah Tew)

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.

Left side-interior shot, with the graphics card and solid state hard drive toward the bottom

(Credit: CNET/Sarah Tew)

Unlike the typical SFF gaming box, Maingear is gunning for the same combination of 3D graphics horsepower and power efficiency that HP showed off in its Firebird back in February. Our $1,275 Pulse review configuration is about $850 less than the Firebird we reviewed, but it also only has one graphics card and no Blu-ray drive. That's a fair trade given the price difference, but the Pulse also addresses one of the Firebird's chief issues by using a standard 16X PCI Express graphics card slot. That means you can upgrade the 3D card in the Pulse post-purchase.

We still have questions about how, exactly, this system counts as Nvidia Ion-based as Maingear has claimed, if it uses a discrete 3D card and a full-fledged Intel Core 2 Quad CPU. We also want to see what kind of balance it strikes between 3D performance and power efficiency. All that and more to come in the next day or so.

Digital Storm's 950Si carries hidden costs for gamers.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

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 no surprise that a quad-core, overclocked gaming system with a 1,000-watt power supply and dual-chip 3D card sucks up energy. We also weren't shocked that the Digital Storm PC drew more power by itself than even the most inefficient all-in-one, which includes the power draw from its display. But once we crunched the numbers, we admit we didn't expect to find such a large disparity.

Consider the following comparison, drawn from the power consumption tests in each system's review:

Annual power consumption cost - Apple iMac (24-inch, 2.66GHz): $16.20

Annual power consumption cost - Sony Vaio LV250B: $29.40

Annual power consumption cost - Digital Storm 950Si: $118.27

Annual power consumption cost - Digital Storm 950Si (2.4 gaming hours/day): $134.77

(See our power testing methodology here.)

Digital Storm has the unfortunate honor of submitting the first high-end gaming rig since we implemented our power testing, so let us be clear that we have no way to say (yet) how its results compare with those of systems from other boutique PC vendors.

As a $3,600 configuration, though, this system represents the middle ground for performance gaming nicely. It didn't set any performance records, but it can play most current games at decent image quality settings on a 24-inch LCD at full resolution. And while we will allow that an extra $120 to $130 in annual power charges might not present a financial challenge to someone who's paid $3,600 for a gaming PC, anyone might pause to consider that even with a nongaming workload (aka our multimedia multitasking test), a system such as this Digital Storm 950Si will consume roughly four to seven times as much energy as a high-end all-in-one PC.

Most performance-driven gamers will consider the added power consumption simply the cost of racking up more kills, but that hasn't stopped vendors from trying to bring that cost down. HP's Firebird was an admirable first attempt, and we're eager to see what Maingear has accomplished with its forthcoming Pulse. Hopefully Maingear, unlike HP, can keep the power draw down, without charging you more for the privilege of fewer frame rates and limited upgradability. We'll know once we get one in for review.

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.

Shuttle's XPC H7 5800 small form factor gaming PC.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

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 found in our review unit, you effectively waste 2GB of it thanks to 32-bit Vista's 4GB RAM limit.

Shuttle's one advantage is that the XPC H7 5800 is two to three inches smaller than those systems in every dimension You sacrifice some upgradeability (the Shuttle can support only one double-wide 3D card, while the others can take a pair of them), but if you really want the most compact gaming desktop possible, this might be it. As much as some of you may value its smaller size, we don't find it worth an extra $600, and the 32-bit operating system makes it that much harder to stomach.

Read our full review of the Shuttle XPC H7 5800.

AVADirect's new slimtower GT3 custom gaming PC.

(Credit: AVADirect)

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. Based on AVADirect's high-end processor offerings, including Intel Core i7 Extreme chips, we don't believe it's using the GT3 to go after both a small footprint and power efficiency, making it more in keeping with the likes of Falcon Northwest's FragBox 2 and Maingear's X-Cube, as opposed to the HP Firebird and Maingear Pulse.

The starting price for the AVADirect GT3 gaming system is $948.82 for the AMD version, and $1,239.92 for the Intel-based model. Based on the art featured on AVADirect's Web page, at least, the company has also apparently addressed our chief complaint about the original GT3 case, swapping out the Miami Vice-blue lettering on the front for decidedly less-rad white.

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's new Pulse aims to replace HP's Firebird.

(Credit: Maingear)

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

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 this morning. We weren't convinced that the expense of three graphics cards plus the expensive 1,200-watt power supply to run them was worth it, but excluding both technologies felt like too much of a restriction on the modern no-limit desktop now that solid-states drives have come into their own.

Maingear's high-flying Ephex, complete with smoky custom paint.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

We know fewer people may be shopping for top-end gaming PCs at the moment, but even if this review provides practical buying advice for a very limited audience, we still think it's worth examining the upper echelons of the PC market, as a glimpse ahead to the kinds of hardware that will be more common, and more affordable in a few years. We also intend to spend a lot of time this year on more down-to-earth PCs, hopefully starting with HP's forthcoming Firebird, unveiled at this year's CES. Stay tuned.

Read our review of the Maingear Ephex.

Maingear's Ephex gaming PC