CNET Editors' Rating
stars Excellent
Review Date:
The good: The Maingear F131 comes in an attractive, surprisingly roomy chassis, and it posted some of the fastest gaming performance to grace CNET Labs.
The bad: The $3,000 price tag puts this desktop out of reach for all but the most enthusiastic PC gamers.
The bottom line: If you're in the market for a $3,000 gaming PC, the attractive, blazing fast Maingear F131 should be first on your list.
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Maingear tries hard to differentiate itself from other boutique PC makers. The new-look Maingear F131 is the latest example, featuring a stunning new case design from Silverstone. It also helps that this $2,999 configuration has the best single monitor gaming performance in its category. You don't need to spend more than $1,000 or so for a decent gaming desktop these days, but especially if you're committed to a single display and don't care about 3D effects, the Maingear F131 is an easy high-end recommendation.
The F131's new appearance comes thanks to the innovative Silverstone Fortress T03 chassis. One of the more attractive cases in recent years, the Fortress T03 is larger than a traditional slim tower, but it also has a more squared-off profile. At 19.17 inches tall by 9.25 inches wide by 11.2 inches deep, the F131 actually has a smaller footprint than the small form factor Origin Chronos system (7.5x9x14-inches). The Maingear system is just more than twice as tall.
Despite its columnar profile, the F131's case allows for all of the hardware components I expect to see in a multithousand-dollar midtower. The system can only accommodate micro-ATX motherboards (normally meant for small-form-factor desktops), but thanks to some clever case design, it has room for two dual-slot, full-length graphics cards, four hard drives (one SSD, three standard), as well as liquid-cooling hardware.
Like other systems from and Falcon Northwest, the F131 directs airflow through the top of the case, allowing more-natural outflow for the warm air inside. This orientation means that all of the ports that typically sit on the rear panel are now situated on the top of case, for better or worse depending on where you want to store the machine.
With the ports on top of the case, the appearance of side and rear panels is just as clean as the front, and the system by itself looks like a very polished piece of hardware. The F131 loses a bit of its 360-degree aesthetic appeal when you string video and device cables from the top, but it's no more of a rat's nest than you get from a standard back-venting desktop.
The Maingear F131 is the fourth desktop I've reviewed with Intel's new Ivy Bridge third-generation Core CPUs, and the second with the overclockable "K" variant. This new generation of Intel chips is more thermally challenging to overclock than the second-gen Sandy Bridge Core family, which is why the Maingear and Origin systems listed above have lower CPU clock speeds than the Core i7 2700K chip in the Velocity Micro Edge Z55.
Otherwise, the Maingear F131 offers competitive value for its hardware. The Origin Genesis system costs $400 more and gives you twice as much RAM, two 60GB solid-state hard drives, and a Blu-ray player/DVD burner combo drive. The Maingear at least offers a larger 2TB storage hard drive. Part-for-part, the two systems offer a comparable deal. You can always tweak the hardware in either system, also, via their respective online configurators.
Our Photoshop CS5 test shows where an overclocked Ivy Bridge chip can't quite offer the same level of performance as an overclocked Sandy Bridge-based PC. The Velocity Micro system is our primary example on that test, where it's about 5 percent faster than the Maingear F131. Otherwise, the Maingear turns in a strong performance, outpacing the Velocity Micro system, as well as the more expensive Origin desktop on almost every test. Except for those who demand the absolute fastest multithreaded performance available, the Maingear F131 will provide some of the fastest raw CPU horsepower of any desktop in its price range.
On our all-important gaming tests, the Maingear F131 shows its true dominance. From high-resolution Crysis, to our most demanding gaming test, Metro 2033, the Maingear posted top scores in almost every run. The one outlier came on the 1,920x1,080-pixel Metro 2033 test, where the $4,999 Falcon Northwest Mach V and its three 1.28GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 graphics cards pulled ahead. The Maingear shows its strength when we ran Metro 2033 at 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution. On that test it's more than three times as fast as the Falcon system, likely due in part to its pair of newer, faster GeForce GTX 680 cards, as well as the fact that each has 2GB of video memory.
Even though the Maingear posted the fastest high-resolution Metro 2033 scores I've seen, keep in mind that it still only achieved 32 frames per second on that test. That's certainly playable, but I would be wary of pushing the resolution beyond 2,560x1,600 pixels. That means if you want no compromise multimonitor gaming, where the total combined resolution would be even higher, you'll want a PC that can handle a third graphics card. Smooth, high-resolution/max detail 3D display gaming will also be a challenge for the Maingear F131 above 1,920x1,080 pixels, at least for the most demanding games. Remember, you effectively lose half your frame rate for 3D gaming, since the PC has to render the image twice.
The F131's new appearance comes thanks to the innovative Silverstone Fortress T03 chassis. One of the more attractive cases in recent years, the Fortress T03 is larger than a traditional slim tower, but it also has a more squared-off profile. At 19.17 inches tall by 9.25 inches wide by 11.2 inches deep, the F131 actually has a smaller footprint than the small form factor Origin Chronos system (7.5x9x14-inches). The Maingear system is just more than twice as tall.
Despite its columnar profile, the F131's case allows for all of the hardware components I expect to see in a multithousand-dollar midtower. The system can only accommodate micro-ATX motherboards (normally meant for small-form-factor desktops), but thanks to some clever case design, it has room for two dual-slot, full-length graphics cards, four hard drives (one SSD, three standard), as well as liquid-cooling hardware.
Like other systems from and Falcon Northwest, the F131 directs airflow through the top of the case, allowing more-natural outflow for the warm air inside. This orientation means that all of the ports that typically sit on the rear panel are now situated on the top of case, for better or worse depending on where you want to store the machine.
With the ports on top of the case, the appearance of side and rear panels is just as clean as the front, and the system by itself looks like a very polished piece of hardware. The F131 loses a bit of its 360-degree aesthetic appeal when you string video and device cables from the top, but it's no more of a rat's nest than you get from a standard back-venting desktop.
| Maingear F131 | Origin Genesis | Velocity Micro Edge Z55 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $2,999 | $3,399 | $2,299 |
| Motherboard chipset | Intel Z77 | Intel Z77 | Intel X68 |
| CPU | 4.7GHz Intel Core i7 3770 | 4.6GHz Intel Core i7 3770K (overclocked) | 4.9GHz Intel Core i7 2700K |
| Memory | 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 16GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM |
| Graphics | (2) 2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 | (2) 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 | (2) 1.28GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti |
| Hard drives | 60GB Corsaid Accelera SSD, 2TB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive | (2) Corsair Force GT 60GB SSDs, 1TB 7,200 rpm Western Digital hard drive | (2) 60GB Intel SSD, 1TB 7,200 rpm Hitachi hard drive; |
| Optical drive | Dual-layer DVD burner | Blu-ray writer/dual-layer DVD burner | Blu-ray writer/dual-layer DVD burner |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) |
Otherwise, the Maingear F131 offers competitive value for its hardware. The Origin Genesis system costs $400 more and gives you twice as much RAM, two 60GB solid-state hard drives, and a Blu-ray player/DVD burner combo drive. The Maingear at least offers a larger 2TB storage hard drive. Part-for-part, the two systems offer a comparable deal. You can always tweak the hardware in either system, also, via their respective online configurators.
Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
67
Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
43
Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
173
Multimedia multitasking (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
191
Cinebench(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Rendering multiple CPUs | | Rendering single CPU |
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
9.64
2.01
Crysis (in fps)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,600 x 1,200 (high, 4x aa) | | 1,280 x 1,024 (medium, 4x aa) |
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
93
95
Far Cry 2 (in fps)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 1,920x1,200 (DirectX 10, 4x aa, very high) | | 1,440 x 900 (DirectX 10, 4x aa, very high) |
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
274
275
Metro 2033(in fps)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| 2,560x1,600 (DirectX 11, very high) | | 1,920x1,080 (DirectX 11, very high) |
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
32
58
3DMark 11 combined test (in fps)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Extreme (1,920x1080) | | Performance (1,920x1,080, 16x AF) | | Entry Level (1,680x1,050) |
Maingear F131 (Core i7 3770K, May 2012)
30
43
48
Digital Storm Ode Level 3 (Core i7 2600K, May 2011)
15
28
42
Velocity Micro Edge Z55 (Core i7 2700K, February 2012)
15
28
42
Even though the Maingear posted the fastest high-resolution Metro 2033 scores I've seen, keep in mind that it still only achieved 32 frames per second on that test. That's certainly playable, but I would be wary of pushing the resolution beyond 2,560x1,600 pixels. That means if you want no compromise multimonitor gaming, where the total combined resolution would be even higher, you'll want a PC that can handle a third graphics card. Smooth, high-resolution/max detail 3D display gaming will also be a challenge for the Maingear F131 above 1,920x1,080 pixels, at least for the most demanding games. Remember, you effectively lose half your frame rate for 3D gaming, since the PC has to render the image twice.
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