Date:
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Author:
Tim Roper
Editor:
Jason Wall
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Maingear X-Cube

Last year's winner for Best Boutique Integrator returns with a small form-factor gaming box. Will the X-Cube live up to Maingear's high reputation, or will unexepected problems throw a monkeywrench into the works?

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Part I – Product Overview: Company Overview and Purchasing

Purchasing from Maingear’s Website

In the course of our contact with Maingear’s technical support department, we learned that its website is about to undergo a significant overhaul. For the time being, however, Maingear’s website looks and behaves essentially the same way it did during the F131 evaluation, save for a few minor changes. The Gallery page, which once contained several high resolution images of Maingear’s products, mostly consists of “Coming Soon” boxes where pictures ought to be. Also missing are the downloadable wallpapers. Thankfully, on the Products page, Maingear has now made the images and tabs clickable, which is far more intuitive than having to click a small icon below each system to select one.

Maingear now focuses almost exclusively on gaming machines, which means there are no HTPC or workstation categories to slow you down on your quest for gaming Nirvana. Maingear’s machines come in three basic flavors: desktops, the small form-factor X-Cubes, and laptops. Selecting the X-Cube (“Great things do come in small packages,” says the website) takes you to a page where you choose between AMD’s Athlon 64 family of processors and Intel’s Core 2 Duo clan. We went for the Core 2s.

This takes you directly to the configuration page, which consists of drop-down menus for each component category. The SilverStone chassis comes standard in either black or silver aluminum finish. For an extra $300, you can choose from eight different automotive finishes, including Cypress Green, Inferno Red, and Speed Yellow.

Maingear limits the amount of component choices available, which is something we often see with small form-factor machines. Due to the limited physical space inside an SFF chassis and the special cooling and noise concerns, we don’t mind an integrator offering a limited set of hardware options - especially when the hardware is as good as what Maingear offers. The X-Cube is available only with an Intel G965 Express motherboard and a 750W “Maingear” power supply (it turned out to be a Thermaltake). You can choose from the entire line of Core 2 Duo processors, all the way up to the quad-core QX6700 Extreme. There’s no option to over-clock the processor on the X-Cube line, which is odd since it is available for Maingear’s desktops. RAM comes in the form of Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400 in 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB configurations.

Maingear offers both NVIDIA and ATI graphics solutions, mostly from the upper end of each manufacturer’s respective lines. The NVIDIA 7600GT comes standard, but all three incarnations of the 8800 series are available as upgrades. Once again, because of interior space limitations, SLI and CrossFire configurations are not possible.

The available hard drives range from the default 160GB Western Digital Caviar to the 500GB version of the same for an extra $125. A 300GB Maxtor, 500GB Hitachi Deskstar, and a 150GB WD Raptor are also available, but that’s it. The X-Cube has room for up to two hard drives, but no mention of RAID configuration is made on the website.

Maingear is currently one of only a handful of integrators to offer a Blu-ray burner as an option. XP Pro is also available for those who might not be ready or willing to take the Vista plunge just yet.

A Logitech keyboard and mouse are included in the base system price, as is a 1-year warranty for parts and labor.

We placed our order on February 11th and immediately received an email acknowledgment. We were informed via email that the order officially processed on the 14th. We sent Maingear an email requesting they ship our system to another address and we promptly received a response saying that it wouldn’t be a problem.

Originally, we had ordered our system with an NVIDIA 7950GT GPU. A few days after placing our order, Maingear called to let us know that the new NVIDIA 8800GTS 320MB was available for the same price and we were asked if we’d like to upgrade. We gladly accepted.

That was the last we heard from Maingear until March 6th, when it sent an email letting us know our order had shipped along with a tracking number. As per Maingear’s usual protocol, the system shipped via overnight delivery.

Overall, the post-order process was slightly less personalized than it was when we ordered the F131. Beyond the GPU substitution, we weren’t asked about any of our hardware or software configuration preferences, nor did we receive any status updates during the build process. To be fair, however, we’re nitpicking only because we had received such excellent personal service during our previous evaluations of Maingear. The service that we did receive was still beyond what many other integrators have provided us.

On the plus side, the turnaround time from when we placed the order until we received the system was about a week faster than our previous evaluation.