Maingear Design and Build Quality

The Maingear PC we received was far smaller than that of the other two units. You all know what they say about small boxes: small cases. And small it was. The Silverstone case that came with the Maingear PC supports only MicroATX boards, so a multi GPU setup was obviously out of the question. A 500W Silverstone PSU takes up the entire mesh opening of the side panel. In all, the case is plain, but it’s stylish and very light.


The back of the PC is very eventful. The Gigabyte board features all standard connections: 8 channel audio, USB, gigabit Ethernet, and PS/2 ports. Extra connections include eSATA, FireWire, SPDIF out, DVI and HDMI on the board. The front USB, audio and FireWire ports and a card reader are covered by side opening flaps.



Like the iBuyPower, the Maingear PC has only one ATI Radeon HD 3870 card. It gets worse though. The hard drive capacity is half of the other two machines as you saw on our comparison table, and the CPU is a relatively low end dual core, while the other two machines have quad core CPUs.


The cabling of the Maingear PC is by far the best of any of the PCs, and the build quality is stellar. All the connections are tucked away neatly, and most areas of the PC are still accessible. Ventilation is great despite the cramped interior. There are two 120mm fans in the front which cover the entire motherboard, and the PSU pulls air from the side panel.


The included bundle isn’t very significant, however it is different than the other two. Aside from a t-shirt and thin cotton gloves, Maingear includes a binder with all CDs, manuals, and a personalized build itinerary. It includes a checklist used by the actual person who built the unit with step by step notes, their signature, and contact information if any questions arise. There are detailed documents on each part, the setup of the PC, and warranty information. Maingear’s attention to detail really impressed us, but we definitely did sacrifice quite a bit of power for the build quality. Now we’ll see what the numbers have to say. On to testing these beasts!