Maingear F1X Gaming PCs

We put this here, because this is one of the first drool-worthy things we have seen launched this year (pending the launch of Apple’s tablet). Maingear, a New Jersey-based maker of boutique PC hardware, brings you a wonderful year-opener in the F1X series of gaming PCs. Saw it here first at DigitalTrends.com:

Boutique high-end PC maker Maingear has taken the wraps off its new FX Gaming PC, a high performance desktop system designed to deliver thrills and chills—plus all the expandability and performance options a true gamer would want. The new systems sport either Intel Core i5 or I7 processors, liquid cooling, support for up to 24 GB of RAM, Blu-ray burners, and SSD drive options—plus support for up to six hard drives.

Maingear is offering three “stock” models of the F1X: the F1X 200 sports an Intel Core i5 processor overclocked to 2.93 GHz, Dual ATI Radeon HD 5750 video cards with 1 GB of video RAM, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, 22× DVD burner, and a 750 watt power supply. The F1X 500 steps up to an overclocked 3.3 GHz Core i7 processor, dual ATI Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1 GB of video RAM, 12 GB of triple-channel DDR3 memory, while the king of the heap—the F1X 750—moves up to an overclocked 3.6 GHz Core i7 CPU, Dual ATI Radeon HD 5870 cards with 1 GB of DDR5 video memory, 12 GB of triple channel DDR3 RAM, a 1.5 TB hard drive plus an 8GB SSD, and a 6× Blu-ray burner with a 22×DVD burner. All three ship with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Read the full post at DigitalTrends.com.

The Maingear F1X series Gaming Desktop

Still gorgeous inside the case

Ok, let’s break the specs down.

Processor – you get a choice of the bleeding edge Intel multi-cores, from i5 to i7, ranging from 2.66Ghz per core to a maximum of 3.33 Ghz per core — all factory-overclocked. An i5 has 3 cores while an i7 is quad-core. We’ve seen a lot of whining about how “low” the overclocks are, but we disagree. While Maingear has kept it conservative on the overclocks, we understand that they had to make sure each and every one of these tricked-out beasts ship running and able — that’s a well-balanced customer commitment right there. And these machines are not necessarily “slow”, if that’s what you’re afraid of. They will eat up any current-gen game you can throw at it, and spit out what’s left of them in beautiful graphics and framerates.

And if you are a TRUE gamer, you should know that these i7 cores overclock like crazy without even blinking. That really should not be a problem for you, eh?

Graphics cards – ATI Radeon HD 5750, 5770, and the king of the hill – the HD 5870 – all feature in the 3 iterations of the F1X series Gaming PC. They are configured in dual-GPU, giving you 2GBs of video memory, with the 5870 sporting spanking new GDDR5s. Suffice it to say you will not encounter any lags here whatsoever.

It's a monster, by any stretch of imagination. Will it fit in your room?

Other specs – All 3 feature 1TB hard drives, with the top of the line also adding an 8GB SSD for faster operating system processes. If all that storage space is not enough for you, the very ergonomic casing allows up to 6 HDDs, or you can get a portable hard drive and plug it into one of the many external expansion ports — 8 USB ports, 2 FireWire ports, and 1 eSATA port. The casing itself is very airy and roomy, just how we gamers like it. Power supplies range from 750W to 1000W.

MacPCWiz verdict – good hardware, highly overclock-able, future-proofed to a fault, lots of room for storage/data/expansion, roomy and cool, with aesthetics not a real problem as well. What more could we ask for? Get us one of these, please?