Maingear Vybe Desktop Review

[kewlguy239]

When Maingear sent us a premium configuration of its Vybe gaming desktop, we were definitely feeling it.

Maingear Vybe Desktop Review : Read more

 

[nitrium]

Not wanting to be cynical, but this looks like a thinly veiled advertisement for Maingear. I do understand that Tom's needs to get money from somewhere to continue to do the generally excellent work you do, but it is what it is.

 

[Gam3r01]

Not wanting to be cynical, but this looks like a thinly veiled advertisement for Maingear. I do understand that Tom's needs to get money from somewhere to continue to do the generally excellent work you do, but it is what it is.

If someone sends in something for free for review I dont see an issue in doing so. If some other company wants theirs reviewed then send in a unit.

On a side note, would it kill these boutique builders to put in some cable combs for their custom cables?

 

[redgarl]

Gimme your money... basically what the company cry out loud. This is overpriced by almost 75% of the retail price of the components.

 

[redgarl]

I thought there was no good or bad components, only bad price... obviously they didn't put that perspective in their OBJECTIVE review...

 

[Karadjgne]

You get what you pay for. In this, the price point is about right. Straight up retail prices are one thing, a fully furnished, oc'd pc with all the little details like led, really nice wiring job, plug n play extreme gamer is another. Considering the amount of cpus you gave to have on hand to get a stable 5.0GHz OC on a 7700k and not get smacked with a high voltage lemon, somebody had to take the time to actually OC that beast and run all the stability/longetivity testing, swap out dud cpus, wire it patiently, etc etc etc, sure there are some builders who can do all that themselves, but it's a guaranteed fact that the majority of ppl asking questions here cannot.
I personally could build and furbish that pc much cheaper, just retail pricing, but if I put that kind of work into a $2000 pc, I'd be charging roughly the same, that's not a 30 minute slapper together pc.

This would make a perfect Graduation present from parents vrs buying all the parts separately and praying their kid doesn't blow up the pc or buy parts that make no sense.

 

[cknobman]

Looks like an awesome machine.

Personally I'd choose a single 1080TI custom board that overclocks to 2+ghz over the 1080SLI.
Less money, more reliable performance.

 

[hendrickhere]

Honestly, I have a single 1080Ti and an overclocked FX8370 (yes, I know I get bottlenecks) and I get about the same gaming performance @4k. So a build that is 3+ years old with (essentially) the best graphics card at the current moment can complete with a $3,800 rig (no matter how beautiful it is).

 

[g-unit1111]

$3800 for Founder's Edition cards? No thanks! I can build my own for $2500 and get MSI or Asus cards and save the other $1300.

 

[Karadjgne]

Right. You can build. I can build. Gam3r01 can build. And have it look, perform similar if not the same or with some different choices in cards, better. But we do this for real, pro and amateur, hobbyist etc. Average Joe off the street doesn't know he's took when the salesperson says "this here FX is 8 cores at 3.5GHz, that crappy Intel is just 4 cores at 3.5GHz, save a few $ and get the amd cuz it's better! ". So buying retail to save $ isn't always the smart investment for everyone.
You can buy everything you need to build a Mustang for less than $30k, but you'll find me at a dealership paying $40k cuz I'm not even close to being proficient enough a mechanic to build one myself.

 

[mlee 2500]

About four years ago I bought a Maingear PC, partly to see what if anything I was missing by not using a Boutique Builder.

Over the past 30 years I've built hundreds of PC's and servers, both professionally and for myself, and I have to say the Maingear was not only among the best PC's I've ever had, but also worth every penny I paid to have someone else do it.

To the inevitable cacophony of folks pointing out how "they could build it cheaper" I will point out why that is: It is because YOU'RE CHEAP. It's because your time isn't worth anything to anyone, not even yourself.

I'll still occasionally build my own machine because I love doing it. But I'll never second guess the value of someone else expertly doing it for me.

 

[Karadjgne]

Big word that... Expertly. And that's the catch. There's plenty of Custom builders out there, iBuyPower, CyberPower PC, MainGear, Falcon NW etc. The trick is trusting that what you pay for is actually 'Expertly' built. Me, I reserve judgment on a build until I've torn into it, scope out everything. To date, there's only one pc I've come across that you couldn't have paid me to tinker with, built by Falcon NW. I swear, whomever actually built that machine must have been OCD, it was that flawless.

 

[mlee 2500]

You're absolutely right of course, Karadjgne...and that's why I put that "expert" qualifier in there. An inexpert build by someone else is a waste of both your time and money.

When people talk about how long it takes "to build" a PC, they usually are only referring to how long it takes to assemble the parts...the easy work (unless maybe you're doing a complicated water cooled assembly).

In fact, you should be spending at least two or three times as long as it takes you to assemble the parts just researching and choosing them. When you use a qualified boutique builder like Maingear, they've already figured out to use mother board x or y, but not Z, in that particular chassis, or that using one particular cooler in that chassis will leave enough room for the video card but not another. Or identified a host of other potential compatibility issues. And because they loose money when they sell a part model that has issues, they know what to stay away from.

Again though, that's assuming they know what they are doing, and why I chimed in that my experience with Maingear was very positive, except that it robbed me of the joy of building it myself.

Which leaves me to a final point...when assembling your own PC, it's still worthwhile visiting the web site configuration pages of the boutique builders to see what parts they are using and combining togeather, as you can bet the selection is based on experience and sample sizes larger then your own.

 

[Karadjgne]

Sage advice to the masses. I'll even throw in an 'Amen brother!'
I can slap a pc together in about 30 minutes or so, my last build took over 6 hours just to get the wiring and case mods satisfactory. And that's not including the 2 days worth of software, OS, tweaks etc and the extra weeks worth of stability/OC testing. Since ppl like MainGear have a much broader than 1 cpu access, that would have been nice, and cut that week down to hours or less if a cpu wasn't performing to snuff. Lot to be said for the ability to cherry-pick sometimes.

 

[junglist724]

Of course you can build an equivalent machine for less money, but this system does come warrantied, validated, and stress tested. My current employers are stuck with ARCGIS Desktop 10.x which is held back by code from the 16-bit days, but they are slowly transitioning to the new Pro version which is a completely modern application and Ryzen's mix of single threaded and multi-threaded performance is PERFECT for our use case(the alternative is an underpowered i7 system, or extremely overpriced Xeon). But, since there's no guarantee that I will continue to be here to support them custom in house built workstations were a no-go, and of course none of the big name OEMs have any Ryzen powered workstations, just fairly low end desktops. So, the solution was to go with this reputable system builder called Maingear that could meet both our component selection, and warranty/on-site support needs.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yep. Nvidia Quadro. Same thing. Pay slightly more for a card that just seems to be half of what 's consumer grade card can do. Until it goes belly up, then 1 phonecall gets you vendor support tech in conference with nvidia tech and if needed you'll have a new card delivered and installed by a certified tech in a matter of hours. Amazon rma, call me in a couple of weeks. Sometimes that guatantee/warranty really is worth the extra $ upfront. As I said earlier, in this at least, you get what you pay for.

 

[berezini.2013]

How much is that case without that crappy logo?

 

[James Mason]

@brezini.2013 $65 USD. It's just an NZXT S340, comes in an large variety of colors as well.

@thebuildityourself vs boutique debate.

What i'm seeing from this company in the article is a lot of "We got these parts the cheapest, so pick the ones you want at this inflated price."
They might be somewhat more experienced builders sure, but the parts they're choosing aren't exactly up to my standards.

 

[Karadjgne]

Nzxt s340
Intel i7-7700k OC stable at 5.0GHz
Corsair AX 860
MSI Z270 Gaming M7
Samsung 512Gb 960 Pro NVMe
Seagate 2Tb
Coolit built 240mm aio
Custom led
Custom sleeving
Excellent wiring management

I'm sorry, but the only things not top line quality/performance/aesthetics are the 2x nvidia reference Founders Edition cards. Just how high are your standards?

 

[James Mason]

I looked at their configurator page, wasn't really impressed with the options.
I don't see much value in a lot of that custom stuff really.
The high overclock could be somewhat justifiable price increase though.

 

[g-unit1111]

To the inevitable cacophony of folks pointing out how "they could build it cheaper" I will point out why that is: It is because YOU'RE CHEAP. It's because your time isn't worth anything to anyone, not even yourself.

I'll still occasionally build my own machine because I love doing it. But I'll never second guess the value of someone else expertly doing it for me.

I build and mod because I love doing it, and it's a worthwhile hobby and skill to have. Where I work we build all of our PCs in house - saves us thousands of dollars on the bottom line. Is it worth going to a boutique vendor like Falcon Northwest or Maingear? Sure if you got the extra cash to float around. But not all of us can afford the extra $1200 or whatever the cost is, which is a good reason to build yourself. Is it cheaper? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I mean look at Cyberpower and IBUYPOWER. They may seem like it's worth it in the short run because they tempt you with coupons and savings offers. But in the long run if you need anything serviced that's where they get you. The thing with PC building is if you're interested in doing it, it is worth the investment of both time and money. There's both pros and cons of going the DIY route and there's pros and cons of going the boutique PC route.