We have an entire playlist of pre-built system reviews on the channel here: ua-cam.com/play/PLsuVSmND84QuM2HKzG7ipbIbE_R5EnCLM.html The 3D component COASTERS ARE BACK IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! Back-orders are going out the door first: store.gamersnexus.net/products/3d-coaster-pack-4-component-coasters Grab a GN Modmat for PC building: store.gamersnexus.net/products/modmat-volt-large
Hey @Gamers Nexus what do you end up doing with these computers? Keep them for regression testing or give them away to charity? It must be starting to taking up a lot of space.
You talk about getting these 'secretly' to rightfully see the condition the general public would get them in, do you think there is any merit to also getting one 'publicly' at least once to compare what they fix/change when its for review?
Just got my coasters last week and love them! Very high quality. I was a little nervous about the differing z-heights of the components and whether cups, cans, or bottles would sit wonky and I can say that I've yet to find anything that doesn't sit properly. Great work as always on the products.
No major callout on the two RAM sticks? That's one of... like less than five prebuilts you've gotten like that, and you _barely_ mentioned it. Also, once again, the repeated false claims about it being impossible to reuse nonstandard hardware... do you think that Dell and HP DRM their BIOS to the case, the way Chromebooks key it to the OS so you can only boot Google-endorsed kernels, or something? Don't be ridiculous. I'm extremely disappointed. You can do better than this. It isn't even hard.
Just finished watching the full review and I’m very thankful. I do need to address that the top panel would’ve never shipped damaged like that from our facility. It’s definitely shipping damage.. which is a bummer because I feel like we try so hard to prevent damage by using extra packing material. Overall amazing review.. I would also like to welcome you someday to pay us a visit so your viewers can see how the sausage is made. 👊😎 Thank you again 🙏 MAINGEAR / CEO
I guess I'll use my powers as "First!" to ask if there's any expectations to see the F131 case being sold stand-alone again? I remember seeing it once when just dumb browsing but not later on when I was actually considering.
Great to see SIs in the chat. Curious how often no box damage = bent metal panels on the inside? Perhaps a weak point in the case. Would like to see a public follow up from GN & Maingear on what happened to this unit, as both of y’all look to be honest parties with nothing to hide haha. Maybe we can figure out an updated solution for future customers.
Did you guys implement the XMP/DOHCPAMDwhatevers after seeing other reviews of pre-builts mentioning the memory timings not being what they reasonably should be? Punch some holes in the case and Steve will like you even more lol. A walkthrough of an SI would be awesome to see so hopefully you guys can work something out if hes interested. I did notice that either its another video or they didn't test your CS team.
Maingear should frame and hang "I don't have major complaint -GN" at their headquarters because that's an award barely anyone else had. That's an important milestone
If this system had a front panel like the Cooler Master NR600 ( great CM product ) and a better air cooler which cost no more money than a Cooler Master 212 ( not great CM product ), then this system would be a home run, basically.
When LTT did a secret shopper program a while back...Maingear got some really good marks for pre-sale service, post sale tech support and a rather decent build, seems like Maingear actually gives a shit about quality and building systems that actually work with little to no bloatware. If I had to mail order a desktop instead of building it, Maingear would be first on my list.
They also sell the Vybe chassis by itself at Micro Center. I think that's pretty cool, it shows they have confidence in it and it's not simply a gimmick chassis like some other brands..
I liked the LTT secret shopper and GNs prebuilt reviews. It helps to hold these companies accountable. And LTT and gamers Nexus and other tech tubers have definitely held these companies feet to the fire inciting change that is consumer friendly. This is a good thing.
We need a shirt with Steve's pre-built rating system on it :) "I don't have any major complaints" "Not complete garbage" "Better then Dell" "Did not catch on fire" "Fire hazard"
@@samgoff5289 to be fair, this was ordered in October of 2021. a 3080 was still $1,400. No you’re building an entire pc around a 3080 was under 300 bucks.
Note: Maingear has now featured this build front and center on their site and are now selling it at $1600, a $100 discount versus the price in this video.
keep in mind that the spring sale $1600 version has a stock amd cooler on it. Rather than the cooler master one on the $1700 system that is shown in this video.
Bought a vybe 3080 rtx machine a few months ago and was happy with the build and price point but had a random restart issue. We worked through it with tech support and still didn't fix the issue but narrowed it down to cpu. Shipped it back and for it 5 days later with a new cpu. Couldn't have had better support from thrm
I bought a prebuilt from nzxt last year. Had an issue after 10 months of use. It took 3 months of shipping the pc across the country multiple times and went through 3 GPUs before they just rebuilt the pc. Glad they honored the warranty and tech support was very nice, but I was very disappointed it took so long. If I bought a prebuilt today, I would go with maingear after seeing this.
Yeah, I just want to see the list of pre-builts that they review, to grow longer at a slightly faster clip... Other than that, no major complaints. ( and to that point, 3 systems out of 10 recent reviews of this type is a low number, because of that obvious lack of quality out there, so the small increase in review pace would help bring that number up from 3 in a more timely and conveienant manner. )_
My current and considering age, most likely last computer build is that of a Maingear Rush system (custom built to my specs). I spent my working life in computer hardware service and service management. I have only ever bought 2 pre-builts, the first in 1985 where I had a 'need now' situation and this Maingear Rush, the remaining half dozen, I built myself. During my working days, I built many from scratch and rebuilt close to fifty. The Maingear was a post retirement purchase where for medical reasons, I could no longer justify building yet another system myself. My Rush system was DROP shipped and I do mean dropped by an Express company that has a first name that would make you think they were part of the government. As well packed as the system was, it was a total loss. Maingear stood behind the purchase and rushed a new system to replace the mangled system, in minimum time. I might add, at no additional cost to me. Maingear's Technical Support is above reproach as is their Customer Support, including on weekends and after hours. With over 45 years in computers, my expectations were very high and Maingear batted 1000%. I do wish that you would take Mr Santos's suggestion that you pay them a visit for a tour of their operation. I have seen the company video, but would love to see you do a tour and report on this SI. Personally, my hat is off to Mr Santos and his company. More expensive, maybe. But, worth every penny.
I have a custom Vybe from Maingear and I can confirm that the case gathers a huge amount of dust. Everything else is top notch. I’m happy to see they passed GN’s critical eye, well-deserved.
From what I've seen of Maingear, they're not the sort of company to let something like that case damage slide. I spent most of the video wondering how they could've missed it. It's the filter. The damage is obvious with the filter removed, but with it on it's a lot harder to see. I can't really see it from the inside either (though maybe it's more noticeable in person).
That feels way more like shipping damage than anything Maingear did or even saw (they probably toss it if this case came to them as is). Having worked at UPS (probably applies to FedEx and many others) for a year or so, let's just say they aren't gentle. Even with 'fragile' stamped all over the box. If anything, it seemed like they got a bit rougher than they otherwise would when they saw it. I've also seen prebuilts just like this come flying out of a box (from bad boxes/taping jobs, customs sometimes being a culprit). This could've easily been that (obviously hard to without knowing the process). Tossed out of a box, thrown into something and then repackaged.
@@icanmakeeverythingilovedie9861 You're completely right, it feels like if you put fragile on it they get more of a "fuck this guy" vibe and handle it roughly like they have a personal vendetta for you asking them to be careful
@VaderxG Also possible they missed it completely by not checking under the dust filter. Since you cant tell with it on and the fact there's no top mounted fans I think it's plausible they could've easily just overlooked it Wallace denies it in his comment saying it's impossible for it to have happened in house but with no damage to the box and the amount of packing material used, I doubt it happened in shipping. Honestly he should've just said they'd take a better look at their QC process to make sure it doesnt happen again rather than deflect the blame
I bought a vybe with a 3070 for 1600 on black Friday. Wish I could have done my own build but all things considered I have been very satisfied with the system. It did come with the 3600mhz memory running at 2400 out of the box which was weird but not a big issue obviously.
With the quality of maingear support I am sure minor problem like this can be resolved almost immediately, when I look at SI, my primary concerns are the build quality and hardware, these are not easily fixible by a novice user.
It's a standard computer (unlike Dell or HP) so not much of a loss on buying instead of building... At least you have a machine that can grow with you.
That could easily have been the system resetting it for whatever reason, or just a tiny oversight by the person who put it together. Rebooting to bios, clicking One drop box to change that is Nothing to some of the other things people have had to deal with.
@@YungThuga212 yeah I fixed it immediately upon discovery, again it wasn't an issue at all. Only pointing it out because it is possible that some SI customers would never discover the issue and would be losing some performance. But it's a tiny complaint. I recommend maingear for anyone going the pre-built route. Just make sure everything is in order or have someone with technical knowledge do it for you. This advice would extend to most near $2000 tech purchases.
@@Verpal Problem is your average PC consoomer has no idea what ram even is, much less what speed it's running at, so they would never know, and would have wasted money on the ram.
Appreciate the honest and thorough review. My wife and I are on our 3rd set of Maingear Vybe machines. We handed the old ones down to family and they are still running strong. The very few times we needed support the company has been excellent. We opted for the liquid CPU cooling option which brings the noise level down *significantly* and has been trouble free. Can't recommend them enough. Solid and stable machines at a competitive price.
I commented years ago when Linus did his first version of a similar video with Maingear, and some others. Many people disagreed when I said that Maingear having better customer support, more helpful support agents, and a more soundly assembled PC should've been worth more than the very slight performance deficit their system had vs the competitors. Glad to see my original point still stands. If you're dealing with someone who doesn't understand computers, you want to send them to whoever will be the most helpful and reduce potential frustrations the most. The difference in performance per dollar is enthusiast nitpicking and not important to the average consumer.
9:32 I'm glad it happens to everyone. I built my first AMD PC in years and had to pull the cooler... and the CPU accidentally. I thought I might've broken the socket! Luckily no harm done, but had to heat the chip a bit to get it to pop off the cooler.
I did the same thing the first time I moved my R5 3600 into another mobo! Didn’t know you’re supposed to run it for a while to melt the thermal paste and pulled out the CPU with it, had to bend back a few pins but it made it! Still running in my PC today
Sweet, I correctly guessed in the poll it would be a Maingear. My wife has a 6-year-old Maingear that has been trouble-free. Another great builder that is cheaper than Maingear/Origin/Digital Storm is eCollege PC. That's who my current rig (5800X/RTX3080) was purchased through in Dec 2020 and it was over $1K less expensive than a comparible Origin/Maingear/Digital Storm system with the same components. They have been around for over 20 years now, really cool guys and super responsive. My rig has been problem free and was built very nicely.
@@yanuehara8017 No, you would need to do your own due diligence on eCollege PC. If you search around for their customer reviews, they are overwhelmingly positive.
My Maingear R1 has been fantastic. When I have had questions or concerns, the customer service has been awesome. I've been impressed and happy with my choice. I also suggested ways to improve their services and they took them and acted on them. It was awesome to see a company take feedback and make things even better.
Interestingly, this motherboard - the MSI B550M Pro-VDH Wifi - was rated "Best Value B550" board by Hardware Unboxed. It was about $100 back in August 2020 when they tested it, had more features than boards costing $130, and a serviceable VRM that didn't throttle an overclocked 3950X.
occasionally you'll catch one in the microcenter "Powerspec" in house brand prebuilts. Usually no though, typically its a AIB card due to quantity/packaging orders and such. Discounts on large purchases ect.
I got this computer 9 months ago instead of dealing with the hassle of trying to source parts for a whole new build. I believe it was worth the $1700 considering the higher end components and build quality. At the time this was easily the best bang-for-buck prebuilt on the market. The company communicated really well over the 3+ months it took to build it. I'll definitely buy from Maingear again.
@@cockatoo010 I’ve had it for a couple months now. I had to send it back initially because the cpu was busted. But after I got it back (which took a little over a week) it works great. Haven’t had any problems with any games I’ve played. Forza Horizon 5, Monster Hunter Rise, and Genshin Impact for example run great. Only thing I am going to improve is upgrading to 32 go ram
@@nemesis8508 I'm curious what you mean by "the CPU was busted". You mean the CPU cooler? Because if so I would think that would be shipping damage. But considering the response from the CEO I would be inclined to believe that they would claim all damage as shipping damage as apparently they "run a tight ship". I suppose an employee making a mistake and passing on a damaged PC to a customer in order to avoid explaining it isn't even considered a possibility on that ship.
@@lightly-red-huedmaleindivi6266 But 8gb v-ram might not be enough for some modern titles at higher resolutions. But I don't worry about that since I can't see past 1080p... 😅
Definitely my favorite series. Love how in depth and informative it is and seeing how each system compares to each other. Keep them coming! Can't wait to see what else is in the line-up!
I'm always a bit tweaked when I see a micro-ATX MB mounted in a case that has enough slots for an ATX MB. I'd rather have a smaller case or more slots.
I knew it would be maingear . Lol. I purchased a system from them a little over a year ago.. 5900x cpu , 6800xt gpu , 240 aio on the top . Never seen my CPU break 70°C with all core over clock. The case works better than it looks .
I'm honestly stunned you got ANOTHER computer with product damage. It's something I've never seen, but I believe it's been the majority of cases for you now.
I’ve gotten quite a few cases shipped to me over the years damaged in shipping. My last one was the thermaltake tower 900. I think ups and usps hate my hobby
@@nathanlowery1141 maybe I've just been lucky. However, I don't remember any of their case reviews having damage over the years. Maybe that's because the companies knew who they were sending it to.
Finally a prebuilt that doesn't seem like a scam. I actually suggested a Maingear system to a family member last year and this review provides me with some peace of mind that I didn't misguide them. These prebuilt reviews are priceless-- thanks to GN for doing them!
I got the 3080 variant in November 2021. Crazy to think it was that long ago. I was concerned about airflow but it wasn’t that bad and the competence in the build, the support, and the off the shelf parts sold it for me. That and it was a reasonably priced prebuilt.
My friend has this exact model and I have two of the higher level Vybes from this year. We both upgraded the SSD and the RAM and these things eat through anything we throw at em. Their build quality has always been clean and their support is awesome. For what it's worth, we didn't see the severe upper chassis damage in the video, but there was a little damage around one of the metal back panel screws from shipping. Great packing foam saved the tempered glass though. Out of sight, out of mind.
Finally a MainGear review! I've been really impressed with how they spec their builds. Their builds always make sense, good midrange GPU, CPU, PSU, two sticks of properly specced ram. Love that they also didn't put in a shitty AIO as well. And incredibly well priced. I wonder if that case damage was like that from whoever makes the case and MG never noticed because they didn't install a radiator? Really interesting either way. Can we get a video of someone calling their support to see how their customer service is? From LTT video, they seemed to be top notch; I think it's just as an important part of purchase as the actual system build.
I'm going to guess that someone sat (or stood) on the box during shipping, thus bending the frame while not showing any 'collision' (or obvious) shipping box damage.
I built my first pc in this Maingear Vybe case, which Microcenter used to sell as a standalone. This case is designed and better suited for water cooling, Maingear uses it for their high end custom loop builds. I first used the stock Ryzen 3900x air cooler and the thermals were ok at best, would clearly benefit from more airflow. Then I installed a Corsair 360 aio as a front intake and both my cpu and my evga 3080 top out in the 60s, never break 70 even under heavy load or simultaneous benchmarking. I’ve been very happy with this case and never felt the need to update/upgrade it, and I’ve upgraded every other component in my build, some several times over. I’m also a car guy and love that the Maingear logo is inspired by the manual gear shift pattern.
Just a thought: since this video series is running over a long time now, what do you think about adjusting the comparison charts for the new prices on these prebuilts? I just checked and I see that the Aegis R at $1700 now has an RTX3060, and the config that Steve reviewed is now $200-300 lower than when it was reviewed.
You should focus on how little care is put into building the system with MSI Aegis R, not its price. They send you a computer that doesn't come at the expected performance level. That's not acceptable even if its a gift.
I got a 3080/5900x vybe last year. I wish I could have built it myself, but at that time it was impossible to find a 3080 for a reasonable price. (It would have cost me about as much as I paid for the whole system for just the 3080) overall I had no issues at all and it has been performing fantastically since I've gotten it. Good to know you put a seal of approval on it. I do plan to do a case migration at some point. But I haven't had any issues with Temps thus far (I know. Surprising since it seems so choked off.) Cpu never goes above mid 60s under load. And the gpu sits right around low to mid 50s under load. All on all I was (am) happy with my purchase.
Bought a maingear 3 years ago and up until now, it work perfectly out of the box with zero bloatware. Buying a new maingear again this year for my nephew and for myself, targeting the RUSH model this time
I always had a good impression of Maingear and aspired to have one of their systems someday, very nearly pulled the trigger on one too a few months back. Glad to see my trust in them was not misplaced, even if I'm not ready for a new PC yet.
I bought a customized Vybe 3080 on October 25th, which was delivered on November 29th. After a few months of owning the PC I started having issues with games and other applications crashing and the occasional blue screen of death. I did some troubleshooting and after running memtest I discovered I had faulty RAM (2x16 GB DDR4-3600). Maingear sent me a replacement kit after paying a deposit of $269, which was refunded upon return of the old RAM kit. It did cost me the price of return shopping on the old RAM, but it was like $20 so no big deal. Overall, I'm very satisfied with my build.
I bought the 3070 / Ryzen7 w/AIO cooler version of the Vybe during their black Friday sale for right around the $1900 mark. It beat or met basically everything I cross shopped it with at the time in price to performance. I can second everything GN found in this review good and bad. My case wasn't damaged like the one in the video. However it was a little twisted, which made it hard to install the side panels after removing the packing. I gave her a little reverse twist to straighten it out. The box it shipped in was pretty beat up so I suspect shipping damage. If you going pre-built I would highly recommend Maingear, seam to be one of the better system integrators out there, especially for the price. My only real complaint is it shipped in a bright red box with a PC on it during a GPU shortage, discrete packaging would have been nice. Maingear doing well in LTT secret shopper series was one of the main reasons I went with them
Cool to see you review a main gear. Although a lot of these prebuilt are horribly priced right now as they are priced like gpu’s are still double msrp when they are somewhat normal now.
To be clear, this system was ordered back in October this past year, back when GPU prices were still hot garbage. I'm interested to see where a system like this would sit with prices having come down significantly as of late...
Microcenter used to sell those cases. They occasionally got dented like that. I built a PC in that case and just mounted the AIO fans as intake rather than exhaust.
@@FuburLuck I'm guessing it's a variation of the Nigerian Prince scam. They'll try to get your banking info to send you the prize, then drain your funds.
I remember back in.. idk, 2010? 2011? ChillaFrilla (remember that guy? OG!) got a Maingear system with a rotated case (The IO was on the top? Or on the bottom? Cant remember) because heat naturally rises bla-bla, we know how much that applies when you add airflow (thats not to say it was a bad system, just unnecessary).. Anyway, I remember being so amazed at that PC, would've given anything to have one lol. Nice to see they're still going strong.
Main gear has been around quite sometime. I'm pleased to see they are keeping to their roots of enthusiast builds. All the parts are at least off the shelf. I agree there Dell HP and so many others just use the cheapest garbage you can get your hands on. Things could have been nicer for that price point seeing how the most expensive item in that entire build is the GPU
I can't even purchase most of these pre-builds but I so appreciate the review, regardless; so informative (as per usual) and thorough - you're a gift to the industry
i will never buy a prebuilt or recommend someone to do so but there are people for this market and its important for reviewers to keep them honest and consumers informed so i always upvote these videos
"Today Steve says he would probably recommend a prebuilt PC in a case with a solid front panel." Who are you and what did you do with the real Steve? But seriously.. that just shows how bad most of the prebuilds have been. A PC built without any major mistakes other than being in a sh*t case makes it relatively good.
Steve, you can stick a metal jimmy tool like iFixit sells under a corner of an AMD cpu to break the suction and not disturb the paste, for the future, I had one that was basically cooked on and that was the only way to break the suction and it worked great.
I would love to see the addition of information of MSRP pricing of the off the shelf components so that viewers can see when/where applicable how much additional money is being spent for the build process, customer service, parts mark up etc.
While shitty builds lend to good funny content, it is nice to see an SI do a good job frop time to time. A clean OS instal with good BIOS settings and components operating to the full capacity should be a pretty simple bar to meet. Preventing 100% of issues in all systems would be an unrealistic expectation. Shipping dmg and human error will happen. But minimizing them with good best practices and QC will lead to happier customers (repeat business and referrals) and less phone calls and shipping back and forth for warranty work (less expenses).
I LITERALLY just found Maingear on Microcenter's website, went to their website, saw this very desktop, and came to the channel to doublecheck that you had not reviewed it previously and was gonna go tweet it at you, lo and behold here you are reviewing it. It looked like a solid machine from their site with the promise of dual channel RAM, etc.
At least this system came with the best inexpensive B550 board IMO. The B550M PRO-VDH WIFI has pretty good VRM thermals and options for the price based on Hardware Unboxeds testing.
I have a couple of complaints on that board, is it is power limited if you want to boost with Ryzen Master (as I found when I upgrade to a 5950x). My other complaint is with the mystic light controller which if you use a "temperature" pattern resets any other patterns running on other ARGB headers (I wanted to have my CPU cooler show a temp related color but it kept resetting any other patterns I had running when the temp changed) The ARGB controller is also fairly easy to brick according to OpenRGB and also controls the fans so that is a bad thing.
@@NW1peter Interesting, but I mean given the tier of the board those are sort of minor or expected issues right? I mean the RGB thing is maybe sort of minor but also an issue that should not happening so fair. Running a 5950x in this board seems kind of obvious that you may run into power issues or potentially even VRM temp issues if you tried to OC it. These things are good to know though and I am considering getting this board for a build I'm doing for someone else, but I'll only be using a r5 5600 in there.
@@ZWortek The RGB is a minor annoyance, again not something a lot of folks would care about but something I noticed the patterns resetting out of the corner of my eye when the CPU had a little temp bump. As you say the VRM power limit isn't a big issue for cheaper CPUs the B550 is normally paired with, I'm happy enough with the B550M Mortar I replaced it with. I only really needed one PCIe x4 M2 and the PCIe x16 for the graphics card so the extra cost of the x570 didn't seem worth it to me. I ended up selling my original system (Pro VDH-Wifi+3600+rx580) once I bought a new GPU to a work colleague so I didn't lose out overall.
Dell and HP are OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer). Maingear is an SI (System Integrator) since they don't make components, they buy and assemble them.
I'm new to pcs, have no idea what to buy, I'm disabled and on a very tight budget but I want a reliable gaming pc that I can easily upgrade in the future. My budget for the Initial purchase is about six hundred. I've watched tons of your videos as research towards what to buy. Could you maybe, if you find the time, give me a suggestion as to what to buy? I would Greatly appreciate it. It's hard to trust anyone these days but you are doing honest reviews and I would really appreciate a suggestion. Thank you!
While I agree it is competitive with other pre-built pcs I still consider the well over $400 markup (if your standard consumer orders parts so even more with distributor/bulk pricing) rather insane... At least use a better PSU and double the RAM for that price...
Did you notice the myriad comments talking about how great the MainGear support is? Well, now you know what some of that $400 is buying you. If you're an experienced DIYer building for yourself, then obviously you won't pay that premium. OTOH, if you want to get a system for someone who doesn't live nearby, or someone that you don't want to be the IT person for until the end of time, well, MainGear looks like a good choice to me. This is from someone who's built over 30 PCs for friends and family over the years.
I bought my maingear 3 years ago. I never had to call customer service once and it still works like a charm. I am planning to upgrade with them in 2025!
I wonder how these will stack up against a build of the same price from microcenter(including their assembly fee). Now that there is a big hardware vendor that will build your custom spec in NA it looks to potentially be a good alternative to these. Where I live vendors have been doing it since the early 2000's, if not earlier, so branded prebuilts aren't very common. If this happens in a bigger market like the US I reckon most companies would have to bring something extra to stay relevant, which would be interesting.
It's so expensive I wouldn't be surprised to see that pre-builts from even the worst OEMs beat it in price to performance. And they for sure will on the lower end of the budget.
@@alaeriia01 Just looked it up and tier 1 is apparently 149.99$US for in store pickup. I can get a spec built for free(when buying all parts from the vendor), by any of at least 4 hardware vendors, shipped to my door. And my country has about as many people as NYC. This is pretty stupid tbh
I know it's an older video but thank you so much for making these pre-built videos. they really help me recommend PCs to my family without having to become the IT guy for them. y'all are amazing, keep it up!
It amazes me how expensive things have gotten. Built a near-enthusiast level pc almost 10 years ago at that price point. Building a near-enthusiast level one now for 4k$.
"things" = graphics cards and prebuilts. Building something non-graphics focussed like home storage, home virtualization, router is pleasantly priced at the moment.
Honestly, they’ve always been expensive. I remember my first gaming PC I purchased. Was a senior in high school in 1994.. Gateway 2000. Pentium 60! Lol. Was the first generation pentium processor . They had a pentium 90 at the time but couldn’t afford the $500 difference.. (wish I could’ve because That was the difference between 30fps and 60fps at the time) .that machine ended up costing me $3200.
Once again so happy that I built my own. Thank goodness for GN case reviews. I went with the white Silverstone RL-06. My system is all about high airflow and my component temperatures reflect averages 40*-52*c under heavy loads. R7 5800x on Asus B-550A with a Sapphire RX6800 gpu. My first complete build.
I have to say at least main gear has named it something memorable, I hate seeing prebuilts with nonsense names like the company just mashed the keyboard and hit send “oh I have a cyberpower C24fj63-w1f69Vr”
Awesome video! I hadn't heard of Maingear Vybe, but they're definitely on my radar now! Thank you for taking the time to strip the PC down to examine the build and sharing all the stress testing. I've really been enjoying these videos as I'm trying to learn more about either building or buying my next PC. I'm learning very quickly that bigger price tags DOES NOT MEAN the person putting the machine together knows what they are doing! It's the little touches you guys found during the testing or stripping that blow my mind; superfluous engineering in Alienware/Dell or globs of hot glue in Wal-Mart PC's, or even just poorly designed airflow: seeing how these impact the system build's heat, processor speeds, and GPU performance has been really eye-opening! Thank you again for taking time to educate your audience and do deep dives!
This system with its Ryzen 5600x and 3060 Ti is almost twice as expensive as the 5700x 6700xt system I put together during this Black Friday. While I’m glad to see pre-built systems be designed and assembled competently, the huge price difference makes having to build it yourself well worth the time and effort.
I'd love GN to do this with the company I work for, it's such a good guide of how to to improve our work and give customers the best experience. Unfortunately were on the other side of the Atlantic so I dont think it is feasible.
"Hey Bob, this case is damaged...should I toss it in the reject pile?" "It's not THAT bad, Joe...go ahead and use it, it's not going to make the unit unusable, and whoever gets it probably won't notice it anyway." "OK Bob...hope it doesn't end up on Gamer's Nexus..."
Hey this is the case I got 4 years ago on the recommendation of Dallas microcenter! Never gave me any problems over 4 years of continuously running XCOM 2 in a carpeted apartment without ever getting cleaned lol
Steve, I own a Maingear Element 3 laptop.....For the price, the i7-10875 8 core 16 thread, a 2070 Super inside, with a 240hz panel it not terrible. Gets a little warm when I log on VR Chat with the Quest 2 but all and all....It my favorite laptop to travel with. Just need a cooling pad if I am doing anything too crazy. So, guess what I am getting at here is, Maingear is not trash.
Recommended Maingear to some friends over the past year and I'm really happy to see some external validation from Tech Jesus himself. As far as I know, my friends have had a great experience w/ these.
Thanks for doing these, by the way. I'm a big supporter of GN, and helping to fund this types of videos is my secondary reason (the primary being that I think the channel is excellent).
That's my PC!! I bought a prebuilt Vibe from Maingear during the pandemic.. But mine had a 3900x + 2080 Super. I didn't even open the case for 1.5 years (when I was searching to locate where to install an extra SSD).
I got one of the Christmas Special Vybes... And I've been pretty happy with it overall. Looking to upgrade a couple of the components and replace/add some fans but man, it's been pretty good to me for the past couple of months. A happy customer over here. Loving your insight as always! Looking forwards to the next one!
I don't have a maingear but I recommended it to multiple people. I was with a friend when he got his and we were both were amazed by everything they did. The packaging was the best, customer service and cable management. He came from an old case with zero cable management and he was shocked a computer could look that clean. He thought lots of loose wires was just a given.
As a system integrator, who builds PCs for a living, I appreciate everything Maingear did, they did good, I like and preferred mesh front panel, but most users like them flat. Half of my customers request to use glass front panel because they look clean. I do system customization, actually, I'm more like a system adviser than an integrator, but I do assemble stuff, I did Linus-like cable management, but that is what they get from free assembly and installation. But I always do clean installation. Windows (latest build from uupdump and almost nobody did that here), Office, some essential software for the local market (if I don't install them myself, customers will install them yourself and might get viruses for downloading them from an untrusted source). Sometimes I even do pre-tuning (for free) if I have spare time, and I do collect some benchmark results for my own archival and for later uses like new stuff coming and I need a proof for the customer that the new stuff is better or worse than the old stuff. And I always try to get the best price/performance parts (with availability) possible if they don't request specific stuff (like a specific brand, specific model of part, cuz they like that brand) IF I was the guy from Maingear, I would put a Samsung PM981a or even a PM9A1 NVMe SSD as the boot drive and I will charge like $50-80 more for that as a default option. Not sure if Maingear has access to this kind of Samsung NVMe SSD or not, if they do, they should do that. Not much of the cost compared to 660p. P/s: For those who haven't known it yet. PM981a = 970 EvoPlus OEM counterpart, PM9A1 = 980 Pro OEM. PM prefix means 3-bit MLC (aka TLC) NAND. Samsung does have 2-bit MLC for OEM parts, like SM981 (970 Pro). The only problem with Samsung OEM part is: They are not eligible for Samsung Magician for firmware update, but I doubt anyone who owns prebuilt care about that anyway, and I don't see any problem with that, I built a lot of systems with Samsung OEM parts and they run well.
We have an entire playlist of pre-built system reviews on the channel here: ua-cam.com/play/PLsuVSmND84QuM2HKzG7ipbIbE_R5EnCLM.html
The 3D component COASTERS ARE BACK IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! Back-orders are going out the door first: store.gamersnexus.net/products/3d-coaster-pack-4-component-coasters
Grab a GN Modmat for PC building: store.gamersnexus.net/products/modmat-volt-large
Hey @Gamers Nexus what do you end up doing with these computers? Keep them for regression testing or give them away to charity? It must be starting to taking up a lot of space.
You talk about getting these 'secretly' to rightfully see the condition the general public would get them in, do you think there is any merit to also getting one 'publicly' at least once to compare what they fix/change when its for review?
Just got my coasters last week and love them! Very high quality. I was a little nervous about the differing z-heights of the components and whether cups, cans, or bottles would sit wonky and I can say that I've yet to find anything that doesn't sit properly. Great work as always on the products.
PCPARTPICKER'ed out all the parts here and it totaled $1,270...NOT $1,700, so what are we getting here that costs over $400 more??? :/
No major callout on the two RAM sticks? That's one of... like less than five prebuilts you've gotten like that, and you _barely_ mentioned it. Also, once again, the repeated false claims about it being impossible to reuse nonstandard hardware... do you think that Dell and HP DRM their BIOS to the case, the way Chromebooks key it to the OS so you can only boot Google-endorsed kernels, or something? Don't be ridiculous.
I'm extremely disappointed. You can do better than this. It isn't even hard.
"I don't have any major complaint" is probably one the greatest compliments GN could give to your product, lol.
see*
Like LPL taking more than 30 seconds to open a lock.
@@rdspam dang it, I was going to bring up LPL lol
If main gear put that quote on their product page I would buy it in a heart beat.
Congratulations, you didn't fuck it up... too badly.
Just finished watching the full review and I’m very thankful. I do need to address that the top panel would’ve never shipped damaged like that from our facility. It’s definitely shipping damage.. which is a bummer because I feel like we try so hard to prevent damage by using extra packing material. Overall amazing review.. I would also like to welcome you someday to pay us a visit so your viewers can see how the sausage is made. 👊😎 Thank you again 🙏 MAINGEAR / CEO
I guess I'll use my powers as "First!" to ask if there's any expectations to see the F131 case being sold stand-alone again? I remember seeing it once when just dumb browsing but not later on when I was actually considering.
Great to see SIs in the chat. Curious how often no box damage = bent metal panels on the inside? Perhaps a weak point in the case. Would like to see a public follow up from GN & Maingear on what happened to this unit, as both of y’all look to be honest parties with nothing to hide haha. Maybe we can figure out an updated solution for future customers.
Keep it up and progress sir. The people know who to support and will definitely support you if you continue to show care and excellence.
Thanks for staying in touch with the community and making great PCs! It's no wonder you've been around as long as you have.
Did you guys implement the XMP/DOHCPAMDwhatevers after seeing other reviews of pre-builts mentioning the memory timings not being what they reasonably should be? Punch some holes in the case and Steve will like you even more lol. A walkthrough of an SI would be awesome to see so hopefully you guys can work something out if hes interested. I did notice that either its another video or they didn't test your CS team.
Maingear should frame and hang "I don't have major complaint -GN" at their headquarters because that's an award barely anyone else had. That's an important milestone
Had they designed their case to have mesh panels everywhere, this would've made Steve a happy happy man.
I think at this point... just having the front have 2 fan sized meshed holes, Steve would have given high praises.
If this system had a front panel like the Cooler Master NR600 ( great CM product ) and a better air cooler which cost no more money than a Cooler Master 212 ( not great CM product ), then this system would be a home run, basically.
Closed cases are bad tho, theres a reason Steve complains closed cases as minor complaints.
@@Doflaminguard I 2nd that. I want to live in a world where closed cases are only used for water cooling systems
I hate mesh front panel. Holes are so ugly.
When LTT did a secret shopper program a while back...Maingear got some really good marks for pre-sale service, post sale tech support and a rather decent build, seems like Maingear actually gives a shit about quality and building systems that actually work with little to no bloatware. If I had to mail order a desktop instead of building it, Maingear would be first on my list.
They also sell the Vybe chassis by itself at Micro Center. I think that's pretty cool, it shows they have confidence in it and it's not simply a gimmick chassis like some other brands..
LTT is a waste of youtube bandwidth
I liked the LTT secret shopper and GNs prebuilt reviews. It helps to hold these companies accountable. And LTT and gamers Nexus and other tech tubers have definitely held these companies feet to the fire inciting change that is consumer friendly. This is a good thing.
I got a Vybe 3080 and it works great. So far, I only had one issue, and they gave me a good fix. I’d recommend it in a heartbeat
@@dylandrew6071 I'm sure youtube themselves would hard disagree with that statement
We need a shirt with Steve's pre-built rating system on it :)
"I don't have any major complaints"
"Not complete garbage"
"Better then Dell"
"Did not catch on fire"
"Fire hazard"
Having recently seen in person how they build these, it’s no surprise- lots of passion, attention to detail, and just plain good pc building.
Cool, you got a chance to do that? Thanks for at least letting people here know. I guess you live near by and just... asked? lol.
It looks like he’s got a UA-cam channel, probably has a video about it. Explore your curiosity
It's just to bad Maingear is way overpriced, they build them ok but $1700 for a 6 core and 3060ti is to much imo you could have a 3080 for that price
@@samgoff5289 Cool, link that 3080 prebuilt for $1700
@@samgoff5289 to be fair, this was ordered in October of 2021. a 3080 was still $1,400. No you’re building an entire pc around a 3080 was under 300 bucks.
Note: Maingear has now featured this build front and center on their site and are now selling it at $1600, a $100 discount versus the price in this video.
Holy shit you'd expect them to, if anything, increase the price...
I have no idea how they’re making any money on these. Jesus.
@@xMLK3Y the tariffs I think are going away or have gone away in the US so they're probably expecting significantly better margin on future parts.
keep in mind that the spring sale $1600 version has a stock amd cooler on it. Rather than the cooler master one on the $1700 system that is shown in this video.
@@des9544 The stock cooler that AMD CPUs come with isn't even that bad! It's certainly better than Intel's
Bought a vybe 3080 rtx machine a few months ago and was happy with the build and price point but had a random restart issue. We worked through it with tech support and still didn't fix the issue but narrowed it down to cpu. Shipped it back and for it 5 days later with a new cpu. Couldn't have had better support from thrm
thats epic
I bought a prebuilt from nzxt last year. Had an issue after 10 months of use. It took 3 months of shipping the pc across the country multiple times and went through 3 GPUs before they just rebuilt the pc. Glad they honored the warranty and tech support was very nice, but I was very disappointed it took so long. If I bought a prebuilt today, I would go with maingear after seeing this.
@@mattygee79 Considering time is literally money, whatever penny we saved with nzxt got all vomited out with 3 months downtime.
I love this series, hella entertaining and informative
Yeah, I just want to see the list of pre-builts that they review, to grow longer at a slightly faster clip... Other than that, no major complaints. ( and to that point, 3 systems out of 10 recent reviews of this type is a low number, because of that obvious lack of quality out there, so the small increase in review pace would help bring that number up from 3 in a more timely and conveienant manner. )_
My current and considering age, most likely last computer build is that of a Maingear Rush system (custom built to my specs). I spent my working life in computer hardware service and service management. I have only ever bought 2 pre-builts, the first in 1985 where I had a 'need now' situation and this Maingear Rush, the remaining half dozen, I built myself. During my working days, I built many from scratch and rebuilt close to fifty. The Maingear was a post retirement purchase where for medical reasons, I could no longer justify building yet another system myself. My Rush system was DROP shipped and I do mean dropped by an Express company that has a first name that would make you think they were part of the government. As well packed as the system was, it was a total loss. Maingear stood behind the purchase and rushed a new system to replace the mangled system, in minimum time. I might add, at no additional cost to me. Maingear's Technical Support is above reproach as is their Customer Support, including on weekends and after hours. With over 45 years in computers, my expectations were very high and Maingear batted 1000%. I do wish that you would take Mr Santos's suggestion that you pay them a visit for a tour of their operation. I have seen the company video, but would love to see you do a tour and report on this SI. Personally, my hat is off to Mr Santos and his company. More expensive, maybe. But, worth every penny.
I have a custom Vybe from Maingear and I can confirm that the case gathers a huge amount of dust. Everything else is top notch. I’m happy to see they passed GN’s critical eye, well-deserved.
Steve giving a prebuilt glowing praise: 'Ok, it doesn't completely suck'
No "Better than Dell" Award?
From what I've seen of Maingear, they're not the sort of company to let something like that case damage slide. I spent most of the video wondering how they could've missed it. It's the filter. The damage is obvious with the filter removed, but with it on it's a lot harder to see. I can't really see it from the inside either (though maybe it's more noticeable in person).
That feels way more like shipping damage than anything Maingear did or even saw (they probably toss it if this case came to them as is). Having worked at UPS (probably applies to FedEx and many others) for a year or so, let's just say they aren't gentle. Even with 'fragile' stamped all over the box. If anything, it seemed like they got a bit rougher than they otherwise would when they saw it. I've also seen prebuilts just like this come flying out of a box (from bad boxes/taping jobs, customs sometimes being a culprit). This could've easily been that (obviously hard to without knowing the process). Tossed out of a box, thrown into something and then repackaged.
@@icanmakeeverythingilovedie9861 You're completely right, it feels like if you put fragile on it they get more of a "fuck this guy" vibe and handle it roughly like they have a personal vendetta for you asking them to be careful
@VaderxG Also possible they missed it completely by not checking under the dust filter. Since you cant tell with it on and the fact there's no top mounted fans I think it's plausible they could've easily just overlooked it
Wallace denies it in his comment saying it's impossible for it to have happened in house but with no damage to the box and the amount of packing material used, I doubt it happened in shipping. Honestly he should've just said they'd take a better look at their QC process to make sure it doesnt happen again rather than deflect the blame
you only as good as your slackest member of staff while the majority may of started again and binned the case a slacker employee would ship it anyway
Since the filter was pushed down at 20:25, there is possibility of shipping damage.
I bought a vybe with a 3070 for 1600 on black Friday. Wish I could have done my own build but all things considered I have been very satisfied with the system. It did come with the 3600mhz memory running at 2400 out of the box which was weird but not a big issue obviously.
With the quality of maingear support I am sure minor problem like this can be resolved almost immediately, when I look at SI, my primary concerns are the build quality and hardware, these are not easily fixible by a novice user.
It's a standard computer (unlike Dell or HP) so not much of a loss on buying instead of building... At least you have a machine that can grow with you.
That could easily have been the system resetting it for whatever reason, or just a tiny oversight by the person who put it together. Rebooting to bios, clicking One drop box to change that is Nothing to some of the other things people have had to deal with.
@@YungThuga212 yeah I fixed it immediately upon discovery, again it wasn't an issue at all. Only pointing it out because it is possible that some SI customers would never discover the issue and would be losing some performance. But it's a tiny complaint. I recommend maingear for anyone going the pre-built route. Just make sure everything is in order or have someone with technical knowledge do it for you. This advice would extend to most near $2000 tech purchases.
@@Verpal Problem is your average PC consoomer has no idea what ram even is, much less what speed it's running at, so they would never know, and would have wasted money on the ram.
Appreciate the honest and thorough review. My wife and I are on our 3rd set of Maingear Vybe machines. We handed the old ones down to family and they are still running strong. The very few times we needed support the company has been excellent. We opted for the liquid CPU cooling option which brings the noise level down *significantly* and has been trouble free. Can't recommend them enough. Solid and stable machines at a competitive price.
I commented years ago when Linus did his first version of a similar video with Maingear, and some others. Many people disagreed when I said that Maingear having better customer support, more helpful support agents, and a more soundly assembled PC should've been worth more than the very slight performance deficit their system had vs the competitors.
Glad to see my original point still stands. If you're dealing with someone who doesn't understand computers, you want to send them to whoever will be the most helpful and reduce potential frustrations the most. The difference in performance per dollar is enthusiast nitpicking and not important to the average consumer.
9:32 I'm glad it happens to everyone. I built my first AMD PC in years and had to pull the cooler... and the CPU accidentally. I thought I might've broken the socket! Luckily no harm done, but had to heat the chip a bit to get it to pop off the cooler.
waiting for that next good vid Jeff :D
Did you, or redshirt Jeff yank the cpu out with the cooler?
even with an Intel CPU I turn on the PC for at least 30 minutes to warm up the thermal paste before removing the cooler to avoid this risk.
Next time us a hammer and chisel instead of heat
I did the same thing the first time I moved my R5 3600 into another mobo! Didn’t know you’re supposed to run it for a while to melt the thermal paste and pulled out the CPU with it, had to bend back a few pins but it made it! Still running in my PC today
I love the touch of the memory being clocked at 3600mhz with a nice fast Ryzen CPU. Legit respectable
Sweet, I correctly guessed in the poll it would be a Maingear. My wife has a 6-year-old Maingear that has been trouble-free. Another great builder that is cheaper than Maingear/Origin/Digital Storm is eCollege PC. That's who my current rig (5800X/RTX3080) was purchased through in Dec 2020 and it was over $1K less expensive than a comparible Origin/Maingear/Digital Storm system with the same components. They have been around for over 20 years now, really cool guys and super responsive. My rig has been problem free and was built very nicely.
@@yanuehara8017 No, you would need to do your own due diligence on eCollege PC. If you search around for their customer reviews, they are overwhelmingly positive.
My Maingear R1 has been fantastic. When I have had questions or concerns, the customer service has been awesome. I've been impressed and happy with my choice.
I also suggested ways to improve their services and they took them and acted on them. It was awesome to see a company take feedback and make things even better.
Interestingly, this motherboard - the MSI B550M Pro-VDH Wifi - was rated "Best Value B550" board by Hardware Unboxed. It was about $100 back in August 2020 when they tested it, had more features than boards costing $130, and a serviceable VRM that didn't throttle an overclocked 3950X.
Yea it is a great budget board...but in a $1700 pc????
@@samgoff5289 that motherboard is adequate for this build. The cost is in the cpu/gpu
@@samgoff5289 Why waste some of the buyer's $1700 on a more expensive motherboard?
@@Vegemeister1 it’s profit
Wasn't that the A-pro with the pro-vdh coming in close?
wow, you rarely see an FE card in a prebuilt, that's impressive.
occasionally you'll catch one in the microcenter "Powerspec" in house brand prebuilts. Usually no though, typically its a AIB card due to quantity/packaging orders and such. Discounts on large purchases ect.
This is basically what I expected out of Maingear, glad to see they can build a PC
I got this computer 9 months ago instead of dealing with the hassle of trying to source parts for a whole new build. I believe it was worth the $1700 considering the higher end components and build quality. At the time this was easily the best bang-for-buck prebuilt on the market. The company communicated really well over the 3+ months it took to build it. I'll definitely buy from Maingear again.
How is it holding up so far?
@@-BarathKumarS So far, so good. No complaints at all. Still happy with the purchase.
@@andrewshooter This PC dropped to less than $1200 on Maingear's sight. You think it's a good pickup?
@@LaundrySucks It still runs every new game I've tried at max settings 1080p, so yes. Haven't had any issues, even with daily use.
@@andrewshooter Good to know
Holy shit this is literally the exact PC I bought. It’s my first PC. Seems I made the right choice for a prebuilt
how's the experience been? do you have any complains?
@@cockatoo010 I’ve had it for a couple months now. I had to send it back initially because the cpu was busted. But after I got it back (which took a little over a week) it works great. Haven’t had any problems with any games I’ve played. Forza Horizon 5, Monster Hunter Rise, and Genshin Impact for example run great. Only thing I am going to improve is upgrading to 32 go ram
@@nemesis8508 I'm curious what you mean by "the CPU was busted". You mean the CPU cooler? Because if so I would think that would be shipping damage. But considering the response from the CEO I would be inclined to believe that they would claim all damage as shipping damage as apparently they "run a tight ship". I suppose an employee making a mistake and passing on a damaged PC to a customer in order to avoid explaining it isn't even considered a possibility on that ship.
@@nemesis8508 you don't need 32GB of ram if all you're doing is playing videogames
@@lightly-red-huedmaleindivi6266 But 8gb v-ram might not be enough for some modern titles at higher resolutions. But I don't worry about that since I can't see past 1080p... 😅
Definitely my favorite series. Love how in depth and informative it is and seeing how each system compares to each other. Keep them coming! Can't wait to see what else is in the line-up!
I'm always a bit tweaked when I see a micro-ATX MB mounted in a case that has enough slots for an ATX MB. I'd rather have a smaller case or more slots.
I knew it would be maingear . Lol. I purchased a system from them a little over a year ago.. 5900x cpu , 6800xt gpu , 240 aio on the top . Never seen my CPU break 70°C with all core over clock. The case works better than it looks .
Very refreshing to see a system that has a totally clean Windows installation. No bloat anywhere.
I'm honestly stunned you got ANOTHER computer with product damage. It's something I've never seen, but I believe it's been the majority of cases for you now.
I’ve gotten quite a few cases shipped to me over the years damaged in shipping. My last one was the thermaltake tower 900. I think ups and usps hate my hobby
It seems most of the pre-builts they've bought have had some damage somewhere.
My NZXT H510 case was also damaged during shipping. One of the panels had a massive dent that I had to smoothen out myself
@@nathanlowery1141 maybe I've just been lucky. However, I don't remember any of their case reviews having damage over the years. Maybe that's because the companies knew who they were sending it to.
@@Joostinonline Or it could be the driver or loader that does their route for the shipper.
Finally a prebuilt that doesn't seem like a scam. I actually suggested a Maingear system to a family member last year and this review provides me with some peace of mind that I didn't misguide them. These prebuilt reviews are priceless-- thanks to GN for doing them!
I got the 3080 variant in November 2021. Crazy to think it was that long ago. I was concerned about airflow but it wasn’t that bad and the competence in the build, the support, and the off the shelf parts sold it for me. That and it was a reasonably priced prebuilt.
I just liked that not much was proprietary -- which means you can work on it and repurpose parts. This is good!
My friend has this exact model and I have two of the higher level Vybes from this year. We both upgraded the SSD and the RAM and these things eat through anything we throw at em. Their build quality has always been clean and their support is awesome. For what it's worth, we didn't see the severe upper chassis damage in the video, but there was a little damage around one of the metal back panel screws from shipping. Great packing foam saved the tempered glass though. Out of sight, out of mind.
Finally a MainGear review! I've been really impressed with how they spec their builds. Their builds always make sense, good midrange GPU, CPU, PSU, two sticks of properly specced ram. Love that they also didn't put in a shitty AIO as well. And incredibly well priced.
I wonder if that case damage was like that from whoever makes the case and MG never noticed because they didn't install a radiator? Really interesting either way.
Can we get a video of someone calling their support to see how their customer service is? From LTT video, they seemed to be top notch; I think it's just as an important part of purchase as the actual system build.
I’ve been to Maingear and seen this happen live. They know what they are doing and care about the end product.
I'm going to guess that someone sat (or stood) on the box during shipping, thus bending the frame while not showing any 'collision' (or obvious) shipping box damage.
That was my first thought also...
A courier probably stacked a VERY heavy box on top of it.
I built my first pc in this Maingear Vybe case, which Microcenter used to sell as a standalone. This case is designed and better suited for water cooling, Maingear uses it for their high end custom loop builds. I first used the stock Ryzen 3900x air cooler and the thermals were ok at best, would clearly benefit from more airflow. Then I installed a Corsair 360 aio as a front intake and both my cpu and my evga 3080 top out in the 60s, never break 70 even under heavy load or simultaneous benchmarking. I’ve been very happy with this case and never felt the need to update/upgrade it, and I’ve upgraded every other component in my build, some several times over. I’m also a car guy and love that the Maingear logo is inspired by the manual gear shift pattern.
Just a thought: since this video series is running over a long time now, what do you think about adjusting the comparison charts for the new prices on these prebuilts? I just checked and I see that the Aegis R at $1700 now has an RTX3060, and the config that Steve reviewed is now $200-300 lower than when it was reviewed.
This system would still be better since it's priced the same but has a 3060ti instead
You should focus on how little care is put into building the system with MSI Aegis R, not its price. They send you a computer that doesn't come at the expected performance level. That's not acceptable even if its a gift.
I'm using a Vybe right now. Love Maingear!
I've had a Maingear R1 for over a year now, nothing but great things to say about it. Customer service is always top notch as well. 👌
oh honey that cable management is beautiful!
I got a 3080/5900x vybe last year. I wish I could have built it myself, but at that time it was impossible to find a 3080 for a reasonable price. (It would have cost me about as much as I paid for the whole system for just the 3080) overall I had no issues at all and it has been performing fantastically since I've gotten it. Good to know you put a seal of approval on it. I do plan to do a case migration at some point. But I haven't had any issues with Temps thus far (I know. Surprising since it seems so choked off.) Cpu never goes above mid 60s under load. And the gpu sits right around low to mid 50s under load. All on all I was (am) happy with my purchase.
Bought a maingear 3 years ago and up until now, it work perfectly out of the box with zero bloatware. Buying a new maingear again this year for my nephew and for myself, targeting the RUSH model this time
I always had a good impression of Maingear and aspired to have one of their systems someday, very nearly pulled the trigger on one too a few months back. Glad to see my trust in them was not misplaced, even if I'm not ready for a new PC yet.
I bought a customized Vybe 3080 on October 25th, which was delivered on November 29th. After a few months of owning the PC I started having issues with games and other applications crashing and the occasional blue screen of death.
I did some troubleshooting and after running memtest I discovered I had faulty RAM (2x16 GB DDR4-3600). Maingear sent me a replacement kit after paying a deposit of $269, which was refunded upon return of the old RAM kit. It did cost me the price of return shopping on the old RAM, but it was like $20 so no big deal.
Overall, I'm very satisfied with my build.
I bought the 3070 / Ryzen7 w/AIO cooler version of the Vybe during their black Friday sale for right around the $1900 mark. It beat or met basically everything I cross shopped it with at the time in price to performance. I can second everything GN found in this review good and bad. My case wasn't damaged like the one in the video. However it was a little twisted, which made it hard to install the side panels after removing the packing. I gave her a little reverse twist to straighten it out. The box it shipped in was pretty beat up so I suspect shipping damage. If you going pre-built I would highly recommend Maingear, seam to be one of the better system integrators out there, especially for the price. My only real complaint is it shipped in a bright red box with a PC on it during a GPU shortage, discrete packaging would have been nice. Maingear doing well in LTT secret shopper series was one of the main reasons I went with them
Cool to see you review a main gear. Although a lot of these prebuilt are horribly priced right now as they are priced like gpu’s are still double msrp when they are somewhat normal now.
Yep. Hopefully pre built prices start dropping too. My local micro center had 5 3060ti's in stock for retail. I was blown away
To be clear, this system was ordered back in October this past year, back when GPU prices were still hot garbage. I'm interested to see where a system like this would sit with prices having come down significantly as of late...
@@TommyFenstermacher5150 i mean they already dropped the price by $100 compared to in the video
Microcenter used to sell those cases. They occasionally got dented like that.
I built a PC in that case and just mounted the AIO fans as intake rather than exhaust.
I wonder what kind of scam that bot is running.
@@FuburLuck I'm guessing it's a variation of the Nigerian Prince scam. They'll try to get your banking info to send you the prize, then drain your funds.
I just bought a VYBE a month ago, it's fantastic!
Great job Maingear, actual competence, and standard parts, which sadly is rare these days.
I remember back in.. idk, 2010? 2011? ChillaFrilla (remember that guy? OG!) got a Maingear system with a rotated case (The IO was on the top? Or on the bottom? Cant remember) because heat naturally rises bla-bla, we know how much that applies when you add airflow (thats not to say it was a bad system, just unnecessary).. Anyway, I remember being so amazed at that PC, would've given anything to have one lol. Nice to see they're still going strong.
Main gear has been around quite sometime. I'm pleased to see they are keeping to their roots of enthusiast builds. All the parts are at least off the shelf. I agree there Dell HP and so many others just use the cheapest garbage you can get your hands on. Things could have been nicer for that price point seeing how the most expensive item in that entire build is the GPU
That's one hell of a clean-looking build. Damn.
love the prebuilt reviews steve! still a lot of fun to watch even though i’m not looking for anything.
I can't even purchase most of these pre-builds but I so appreciate the review, regardless; so informative (as per usual) and thorough - you're a gift to the industry
i will never buy a prebuilt or recommend someone to do so but there are people for this market and its important for reviewers to keep them honest and consumers informed so i always upvote these videos
The TT ad at the beginning got me laughing my ass off, they actually listened to you. Nice Work!
"Today Steve says he would probably recommend a prebuilt PC in a case with a solid front panel." Who are you and what did you do with the real Steve? But seriously.. that just shows how bad most of the prebuilds have been. A PC built without any major mistakes other than being in a sh*t case makes it relatively good.
To be fair to the case and SI, cooling wasn't an issue. One commenter said it did result in a lot of dust being pulled in, though.
Ive had the Vybe for about 4 months now and i love it. Its extremely fast , i stream on OBS and edit videos on it with no problems. Great review!
Steve, you can stick a metal jimmy tool like iFixit sells under a corner of an AMD cpu to break the suction and not disturb the paste, for the future, I had one that was basically cooked on and that was the only way to break the suction and it worked great.
I was surprised they didnt just do that as well, especially for the stated reason of assessing the paste application.
I would love to see the addition of information of MSRP pricing of the off the shelf components so that viewers can see when/where applicable how much additional money is being spent for the build process, customer service, parts mark up etc.
overall it looks like Maingear is doing a decent job for the consumer. that's great news.
My first thought when Steve opened the back was how the cable management was actually some of the best I have seen.
While shitty builds lend to good funny content, it is nice to see an SI do a good job frop time to time.
A clean OS instal with good BIOS settings and components operating to the full capacity should be a pretty simple bar to meet. Preventing 100% of issues in all systems would be an unrealistic expectation. Shipping dmg and human error will happen. But minimizing them with good best practices and QC will lead to happier customers (repeat business and referrals) and less phone calls and shipping back and forth for warranty work (less expenses).
I LITERALLY just found Maingear on Microcenter's website, went to their website, saw this very desktop, and came to the channel to doublecheck that you had not reviewed it previously and was gonna go tweet it at you, lo and behold here you are reviewing it. It looked like a solid machine from their site with the promise of dual channel RAM, etc.
At least this system came with the best inexpensive B550 board IMO. The B550M PRO-VDH WIFI has pretty good VRM thermals and options for the price based on Hardware Unboxeds testing.
I have a couple of complaints on that board, is it is power limited if you want to boost with Ryzen Master (as I found when I upgrade to a 5950x). My other complaint is with the mystic light controller which if you use a "temperature" pattern resets any other patterns running on other ARGB headers (I wanted to have my CPU cooler show a temp related color but it kept resetting any other patterns I had running when the temp changed)
The ARGB controller is also fairly easy to brick according to OpenRGB and also controls the fans so that is a bad thing.
@@NW1peter Interesting, but I mean given the tier of the board those are sort of minor or expected issues right?
I mean the RGB thing is maybe sort of minor but also an issue that should not happening so fair. Running a 5950x in this board seems kind of obvious that you may run into power issues or potentially even VRM temp issues if you tried to OC it.
These things are good to know though and I am considering getting this board for a build I'm doing for someone else, but I'll only be using a r5 5600 in there.
@@ZWortek The RGB is a minor annoyance, again not something a lot of folks would care about but something I noticed the patterns resetting out of the corner of my eye when the CPU had a little temp bump.
As you say the VRM power limit isn't a big issue for cheaper CPUs the B550 is normally paired with, I'm happy enough with the B550M Mortar I replaced it with. I only really needed one PCIe x4 M2 and the PCIe x16 for the graphics card so the extra cost of the x570 didn't seem worth it to me.
I ended up selling my original system (Pro VDH-Wifi+3600+rx580) once I bought a new GPU to a work colleague so I didn't lose out overall.
Champagne corks flying at Maingear’s office right about now
I've never owned a Maingear, but they've always given me the impression they are a top tier OEM.
Dell and HP are OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer). Maingear is an SI (System Integrator) since they don't make components, they buy and assemble them.
Okay, that recovery usb-stick is a very nice touch to the overall prebuilt system.
I like how it doesn't look stupid.
I'm new to pcs, have no idea what to buy, I'm disabled and on a very tight budget but I want a reliable gaming pc that I can easily upgrade in the future. My budget for the Initial purchase is about six hundred. I've watched tons of your videos as research towards what to buy. Could you maybe, if you find the time, give me a suggestion as to what to buy? I would Greatly appreciate it. It's hard to trust anyone these days but you are doing honest reviews and I would really appreciate a suggestion. Thank you!
Maingear suddenly receiving more orders than they ever had in their lives with their small 'comparable' company.
Those Intel 660ps are criminal. My HP Omen came with one, fortunately I keep all the important files on an ADATA SX8200 Pro.
While I agree it is competitive with other pre-built pcs I still consider the well over $400 markup (if your standard consumer orders parts so even more with distributor/bulk pricing) rather insane... At least use a better PSU and double the RAM for that price...
Did you notice the myriad comments talking about how great the MainGear support is? Well, now you know what some of that $400 is buying you. If you're an experienced DIYer building for yourself, then obviously you won't pay that premium. OTOH, if you want to get a system for someone who doesn't live nearby, or someone that you don't want to be the IT person for until the end of time, well, MainGear looks like a good choice to me. This is from someone who's built over 30 PCs for friends and family over the years.
I bought my maingear 3 years ago. I never had to call customer service once and it still works like a charm. I am planning to upgrade with them in 2025!
I wonder how these will stack up against a build of the same price from microcenter(including their assembly fee). Now that there is a big hardware vendor that will build your custom spec in NA it looks to potentially be a good alternative to these. Where I live vendors have been doing it since the early 2000's, if not earlier, so branded prebuilts aren't very common. If this happens in a bigger market like the US I reckon most companies would have to bring something extra to stay relevant, which would be interesting.
Didn't realize MicroCenter offered a PC build service. Definitely need to pass by my local store this weekend and check it out.
@@lawvincent IIRC, the labor is $200 for air-cooled or $250 for an AIO-cooled PC.
It's so expensive I wouldn't be surprised to see that pre-builts from even the worst OEMs beat it in price to performance. And they for sure will on the lower end of the budget.
@@alaeriia01 Just looked it up and tier 1 is apparently 149.99$US for in store pickup.
I can get a spec built for free(when buying all parts from the vendor), by any of at least 4 hardware vendors, shipped to my door.
And my country has about as many people as NYC.
This is pretty stupid tbh
@@Rspsand07 MC's custom build service is closer to a boutique PC builder than an OEM, in my opinion.
I know it's an older video but thank you so much for making these pre-built videos. they really help me recommend PCs to my family without having to become the IT guy for them. y'all are amazing, keep it up!
It amazes me how expensive things have gotten. Built a near-enthusiast level pc almost 10 years ago at that price point. Building a near-enthusiast level one now for 4k$.
"things" = graphics cards and prebuilts.
Building something non-graphics focussed like home storage, home virtualization, router is pleasantly priced at the moment.
Honestly, they’ve always been expensive. I remember my first gaming PC I purchased. Was a senior in high school in 1994.. Gateway 2000. Pentium 60! Lol. Was the first generation pentium processor . They had a pentium 90 at the time but couldn’t afford the $500 difference.. (wish I could’ve because That was the difference between 30fps and 60fps at the time) .that machine ended up costing me $3200.
Once again so happy that I built my own. Thank goodness for GN case reviews. I went with the white Silverstone RL-06. My system is all about high airflow and my component temperatures reflect averages 40*-52*c under heavy loads.
R7 5800x on Asus B-550A with a Sapphire RX6800 gpu. My first complete build.
I have to say at least main gear has named it something memorable, I hate seeing prebuilts with nonsense names like the company just mashed the keyboard and hit send
“oh I have a cyberpower C24fj63-w1f69Vr”
You need to change your pc name, its my cd key Age of Empires and I don't want yall hacking and banning my game keys thx bye /s
Awesome video! I hadn't heard of Maingear Vybe, but they're definitely on my radar now! Thank you for taking the time to strip the PC down to examine the build and sharing all the stress testing. I've really been enjoying these videos as I'm trying to learn more about either building or buying my next PC. I'm learning very quickly that bigger price tags DOES NOT MEAN the person putting the machine together knows what they are doing! It's the little touches you guys found during the testing or stripping that blow my mind; superfluous engineering in Alienware/Dell or globs of hot glue in Wal-Mart PC's, or even just poorly designed airflow: seeing how these impact the system build's heat, processor speeds, and GPU performance has been really eye-opening! Thank you again for taking time to educate your audience and do deep dives!
This system with its Ryzen 5600x and 3060 Ti is almost twice as expensive as the 5700x 6700xt system I put together during this Black Friday. While I’m glad to see pre-built systems be designed and assembled competently, the huge price difference makes having to build it yourself well worth the time and effort.
"This Black Friday" Therein lies the problem. GPU prices have gone down significantly since this video is out in April.
@@cat-.- And they wouldn't sell prebuilds if they didnt also charge for the actual construction and tech skillz.
I'd love GN to do this with the company I work for, it's such a good guide of how to to improve our work and give customers the best experience. Unfortunately were on the other side of the Atlantic so I dont think it is feasible.
"Hey Bob, this case is damaged...should I toss it in the reject pile?"
"It's not THAT bad, Joe...go ahead and use it, it's not going to make the unit unusable, and whoever gets it probably won't notice it anyway."
"OK Bob...hope it doesn't end up on Gamer's Nexus..."
Hey this is the case I got 4 years ago on the recommendation of Dallas microcenter! Never gave me any problems over 4 years of continuously running XCOM 2 in a carpeted apartment without ever getting cleaned lol
Thanks guys. As someone who no longer has the time or interest to build my own PC these reviews are super valuable.
Steve, I own a Maingear Element 3 laptop.....For the price, the i7-10875 8 core 16 thread, a 2070 Super inside, with a 240hz panel it not terrible. Gets a little warm when I log on VR Chat with the Quest 2 but all and all....It my favorite laptop to travel with. Just need a cooling pad if I am doing anything too crazy. So, guess what I am getting at here is, Maingear is not trash.
I bought this as my first major pc a year ago and as just an average consumer, I couldn’t be happier! The service and quality at MainGear is superb!
Recommended Maingear to some friends over the past year and I'm really happy to see some external validation from Tech Jesus himself. As far as I know, my friends have had a great experience w/ these.
Thanks for doing these, by the way. I'm a big supporter of GN, and helping to fund this types of videos is my secondary reason (the primary being that I think the channel is excellent).
That's my PC!! I bought a prebuilt Vibe from Maingear during the pandemic.. But mine had a 3900x + 2080 Super. I didn't even open the case for 1.5 years (when I was searching to locate where to install an extra SSD).
best custom build systems for me MAINGEAR VYBE \m/
I got one of the Christmas Special Vybes... And I've been pretty happy with it overall. Looking to upgrade a couple of the components and replace/add some fans but man, it's been pretty good to me for the past couple of months. A happy customer over here. Loving your insight as always! Looking forwards to the next one!
The least surprising survey I ever took from Steve, thanks Steve!
I don't have a maingear but I recommended it to multiple people. I was with a friend when he got his and we were both were amazed by everything they did. The packaging was the best, customer service and cable management. He came from an old case with zero cable management and he was shocked a computer could look that clean. He thought lots of loose wires was just a given.
As a system integrator, who builds PCs for a living, I appreciate everything Maingear did, they did good, I like and preferred mesh front panel, but most users like them flat. Half of my customers request to use glass front panel because they look clean. I do system customization, actually, I'm more like a system adviser than an integrator, but I do assemble stuff, I did Linus-like cable management, but that is what they get from free assembly and installation. But I always do clean installation. Windows (latest build from uupdump and almost nobody did that here), Office, some essential software for the local market (if I don't install them myself, customers will install them yourself and might get viruses for downloading them from an untrusted source). Sometimes I even do pre-tuning (for free) if I have spare time, and I do collect some benchmark results for my own archival and for later uses like new stuff coming and I need a proof for the customer that the new stuff is better or worse than the old stuff. And I always try to get the best price/performance parts (with availability) possible if they don't request specific stuff (like a specific brand, specific model of part, cuz they like that brand)
IF I was the guy from Maingear, I would put a Samsung PM981a or even a PM9A1 NVMe SSD as the boot drive and I will charge like $50-80 more for that as a default option.
Not sure if Maingear has access to this kind of Samsung NVMe SSD or not, if they do, they should do that. Not much of the cost compared to 660p.
P/s: For those who haven't known it yet. PM981a = 970 EvoPlus OEM counterpart, PM9A1 = 980 Pro OEM. PM prefix means 3-bit MLC (aka TLC) NAND.
Samsung does have 2-bit MLC for OEM parts, like SM981 (970 Pro). The only problem with Samsung OEM part is: They are not eligible for Samsung Magician for firmware update, but I doubt anyone who owns prebuilt care about that anyway, and I don't see any problem with that, I built a lot of systems with Samsung OEM parts and they run well.
The pc ive been using for years now was a maingear build from like 2015. Its held up like a workhorse, glad they past the test for the most part