Maingear F131 SLI Video
Maingear F131 SLI Video Transcript
[ Music ] ^M00:00:10
>> Hi, I'm Rich Brown, senior editor for CNET.com. Today we're going to take a look at the Maingear F131 SLI. Now this is an Editor's Choice winning gaming PC. It has pretty much everything a modern gamer would want and it's also really well built. Maingear did a great job of making this a fast, expensive system that really is a showpiece. Aside from the fact that it's blue and pretty clean looking, there's actually not a lot going on in the outside of this system. It's got the standard DVD burner and DVD ROM drive, there's also a media card reader. Inside though is where things get interesting. So Maingear used a nice compartmentalized design for the inside of this system. Nice clean airflow down here with the power supply and the hard drives, as well as the hotter parts, the CPU and the graphics card. There's really no wires visible. It's about as clean as you can expect from the inside of a PC. So even though this is a very high-end system, Maingear didn't use the most expensive parts. It actually took maybe a little higher end mainstream parts and over clocked them to be as fast or faster than the really high-end processors and graphics cards. That means that this system, like other high end PCs we've seen recently, actually has pretty strong bang for the buck. So for the nuts and bolts of this system, what we have is an over clocked Intel quad core CPU, two Nvidia graphics cards in SLI mode, two gigs of memory, there's also room for two more. A fast 10K drive for boot up, a large 7200-RPM drive for storage, as well as 1000-watt power supply. So the result of all this is a system that's exceedingly fast on our benchmarks, but it's also not going to totally destroy your credit rating. So it's actually kind of a smart move. The reason being that Next Gen PC gaming is kind of on the cuff of coming out, but we don't really know what the best graphics card is going to be to play those games on. So Maingear kind of hedged its best to make sure that you have ultra fast performance now and solid performance for the future, although you still may want to make some upgrades down the road, depending on how the whole situation shakes out. Overall, though, because Maingear did such a good job of building this system and specing it out, it's an Editor's Choice winner. So I'm Rich Brown and this the Maingear F131 SLI. ^M00:02:13 [ Music ]
Related Videos
Like a homemade stock car, Maingear's F131 SLI-AMD needs some polish, but it blows the doors off most of the competition.
Get a first look at Maingear's new desktop computer in action.
Maingear's Ephex is the fastest PC we've reviewed, and also the most expensive.
The Green Show: Does an e-reader make you green?
On the Green Show this week, energy-efficient light bulbs, a look at the Maingear Pulse gaming PC, and a study on the greenness of an e-reader.
CNET Top 5: Top-rated products of 2007
It takes a lot to earn a high rating from CNET's editors.
Maingear's sharp, tidy X-Cube computer packs a mostly powerful gaming punch, but it loses a few steps due to Vista, and we wish it had a few more features.
KEF's stunningly styled egg-shaped speaker package, the KHT-3005, boasts audiophile-quality sound for music and impressive home-theater performance and has earned it an Editors' Choice award.
Falcon Northwest's FragBox might be the best known small-form-factor gaming PC, but Maingear's X-Cube is currently the most up-to-date. With the latest of everything, if you want a gaming desktop for on-the-road fragging, look no further.
The Maingear Prelude has the best bang for the buck among midrange gaming PCs. It also has a certain stocky visual appeal. It's missing a few features, and you'll have to jump through a few hoops to make upgrades, but on balance, this system is a great deal.
A slight bump to the specifications for the same price in addition to a much appreciated option to upgrade the graphics means the 24-inch iMac keeps the Editors' Choice it earned last year when the brushed-aluminum-and-glass design was first introduced.
