DarkStar
06-19-2010, 09:37 PM
First let me provide a little background, I've been buying custom gaming rigs for 10 years or more, my first boutique build was a Voodoo EGAD (1.33 Ghz Athlon with a GF3 videocard) and was followed up with a Voodoo Rage and then a high end gaming laptop.
A few years and several upgrades latter I found myself in the market for a new rig, and as I had become disillusioned with Voodoo, even before they sold out to HP, I started shopping around for a new high end builder who was interested not only in configuring and building high end systems for their customers but also providing customer service that is second to none.
After reading literally hundreds of reviews from dozens of different sources, most of which I would consider trusted sources but of course some are unknown. As I sorted through them all I found that Maingear's scores compared favorably with the the finest in builders but I also noted that their scores were far more consistent then their competitors. Finally while most reviews didn't really look at customer service those that did tended to push Maingear scores even higher, which is impressive by itself.
I agonized for many months agonizing over systems and components and occasionally toying with the competitors configuration systems but kept returning to Maingear. During this time I called and wrote Maingear on several occasions and despite talking with several different people I found that each one was professional, knowledgeable and surprising were not interested in up-selling my configuration, and in some cases suggested changes that actually decreased the price.
So finally I decided I had waiting long enough and called Maingear one last time, and after reviewing my configuration I decided to make a few changes based on their tech's suggestions, overall the price went up slightly but I ended up with double the space on my SSD, and immediately ordered via the website configuration utility.
Over the next couple weeks I got a BAD case of upgrade fever and actually called once to add in a soundcard and Chris Morley himself talked me out of the upgrade on the ground that I wouldn't see any benefit for the added price. Once again I was impressed that Maingear wasn't interested in selling me components just to jack the price up.
I ordered my rig on Saturday May 22nd and it arrived on Wednesday June 9th for a total of 18 days, it missed the UPS truck on Friday the 4th or it would likely have been delivered a couple days earlier.
The first thing I noticed was “HOLY CRAP THAT BOX IS HUGE!!!!”
UPS only had the unit for 48 hours they did manage to beat the box up fairly well, there was a few nice scraps in the sides and one of the corners, where the box was joined, was pretty well scraped up and the box was absolutely filthy (I actually had to clean the box before taking pictures of it because it was so dulled the pictures didn't show the damage.) The box was far from destroyed but showed far more “wear” that one would hope to see in a box holding over $4,000 worth of new computer. LOL!
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9972/1001902x.th.jpg (http://img532.imageshack.us/i/1001902x.jpg/)
Opening the box showed that the system was packed extremely well, and the idea to pack the rig in the box upside down is completely brilliant, it made unpacking virtually effortless. The box obviously it very well designed and extremely sturdy and protected the system extremely well.
Once the rig was out of the box I was thrilled with how beautiful the Shift case is, a number of people in the forums have said “pictures don't do it justice” and they are 100% correct, this case looks simply amazing. The finish, detailing and Maingear emblem are so awesome they make my Voodoo Rage case seem amateurish by comparison. When I took the bag off it my 10 year old son said “Wow! That's beautiful....... and HUGE!” :)
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2434/1001903r.th.jpg (http://img52.imageshack.us/i/1001903r.jpg/) http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2808/1001904.th.jpg (http://img29.imageshack.us/i/1001904.jpg/)
Included was a nice binder containing your disks and paperwork for the OS and components, a sheet outline all the steps your rig went through from pulling of the components all the way to packaging, with each step checked off by two different people to verify that they were completed. Other then that the binder contains your warranty information and some customer service information. Also included as a bunch of extra cables, connectors and screws, as well as a small folding Maingear branded multi-head screwdriver and a Maingear mousepad.
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5484/1001908.th.jpg (http://img571.imageshack.us/i/1001908.jpg/) http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/753/1001910h.th.jpg (http://img532.imageshack.us/i/1001910h.jpg/)
Opening up the left side panel showed the wonder wiring job that helped make the insides as amazing as the outside. Moving the system proved to be a pleasant surprise as it is much lighter then I expected. Setting it up was simple and having the ports all on top makes things even easier then normal.
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6383/1001917h.th.jpg (http://img130.imageshack.us/i/1001917h.jpg/)
After a quick trip to the store to get an VGA to DVI adapter (I'm still using my 19” CRT while I shop for a nice LCD monitor) and I booted up my new rig and was simply stunned when it went from completely powered down to booted and ready to use in less then 40 seconds, all I can say is WOW!
The SSD in this rig not only makes the rig boot faster then anything I've ever seen but also loads games far faster then I could have imagined.
The rig is extremely quiet, especially when you consider it has an overclocked i7-930, a 1200 watt PS and an Ati 5970 videocard. Even my wife commented that it was a lot quieter then she expected (it's in our living room so we need something quiet since the room since there is three of us living here and while I'm gaming my wife or son might want to watch tv, read or simply sit in a quiet room.
Performance wise I can't say to much yet as I am still shopping for a 24” LCD monitor and such am using my old 19” Samsung CRT which runs at 1280x1024, but even on this dinosaur the image quality is stunning and it's nice to be able to crank every setting up as high as they'll go without bringing the system to a standstill.
Overall I am extremely happy with my purchase although there have been a few glitches. Firstly, much to my son's disappointment, we did not receive a t-shirt with my Shift (I ordered a medium for him since even the XXL would be to small for me as I am over 6' 8”.) I haven't gotten around to calling about it yet, been REAL busy with work (we are in the midst of trying for ISO certification), but I have faith that they will take care of it as soon as I go get a chance to call them when they are actually open.
Secondly my system seems to suffer from some apparently random instability. I haven't been able to track it to anything although I suspect a Windows due to the symptoms. For example as I wrote this in OpenOffice my system appeared to stop responding, then a minute or so later went to a black screen and stayed there, and upon rebooting it was unable to load windows properly, and even the Windows start up repair utility froze the first 3 times I attempted to use it and didn't find any issues when if finally ran. Keep in mind that the rig had run for almost 5 days without a reboot, so it's not a frequent issue, but this is the third time it has happened since I got it so I'll have to start keeping track to try and figure out the cause.
The only issue I have with the case is the pop up access for the USB, sound jacks and card reader, it locks in place when it's down but when it's open it just sort of sits loose at the top spot so when you plug anything into it tried to move downward and close. It's a minor issue but it would have been nice if it had some sort of latch to hold it open.
Finally there are few other minor issues and while they are not actually “problems” they left me slightly disappointed. First up is the binder, while it's put together very nice and professionally my windows disk had slide out of it's sleeve and was sliding around in the bottom of the box when I opened it. Also while the information in it was nice I would have liked to see some documentation on the Shift case itself, such as how to remove the cover, care and cleaning, etc.
Next is that the mousepad, while it looks sharp with the Maingear logo but I would have rather that it was a Maingear branded Everglide or Ratpad style hard mousepad, even if I had to select it when configuring the rig and pay extra for it. Lastly after I messed around with Win 7 themes a little was disappointed that Maingear hadn't taken the time to make all the included wallpapers into an actually Win 7 theme so the system would cycle through them (maybe one with light backgrounds and another with dark ones. Again these were minor issues that take nothing away from the awesomeness that is my Shift but it's just a few little things that could have been done to make an amazing experience even better.
Sorry for the wall of text, and I appologize if I rambled on but I wanted to make sure and cover everything.
MY SHIFT
MAINGEAR SHIFT Chassis with Advanced Vertical Heat Dissipation
Brushed Black Aluminum with Acrylic and Matte Black Accents
AcoustiPack Ultimate Sound Dampening
1.2KW Silverstone Zeus Modular Industrial Power Supply
ATIŽ Radeon™ HD 5970 2GB GDDR5 DX11 (only 1 for now.)
Asus Rampage III Extreme X58 Supporting CrossFire and SLI, USB 3.0, SATA 6G
IntelŽ CoreŽ i7-930 2.8GHz Quad-core with Hyperthreading
MAINGEAR / Asetek Maintenance-Free X120 Liquid Cooling
6GB Kingston HyperX Triple-Channel DDR3-2000MHz Low Latency
YES! - Redline™ Overclock My System!
256GB CrucialŽ RealSSD™ C300 SATA 6G (w/TRIM) (for OS and games)
1.0TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6G 7200rpm 64MB Cache (date storage drive)
All-in-One Integrated USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer
24X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology
7.1 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical Out
Dual On-board Gigabit Ethernet
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and Phone Support with 2 Year Hardware Warranty
A few years and several upgrades latter I found myself in the market for a new rig, and as I had become disillusioned with Voodoo, even before they sold out to HP, I started shopping around for a new high end builder who was interested not only in configuring and building high end systems for their customers but also providing customer service that is second to none.
After reading literally hundreds of reviews from dozens of different sources, most of which I would consider trusted sources but of course some are unknown. As I sorted through them all I found that Maingear's scores compared favorably with the the finest in builders but I also noted that their scores were far more consistent then their competitors. Finally while most reviews didn't really look at customer service those that did tended to push Maingear scores even higher, which is impressive by itself.
I agonized for many months agonizing over systems and components and occasionally toying with the competitors configuration systems but kept returning to Maingear. During this time I called and wrote Maingear on several occasions and despite talking with several different people I found that each one was professional, knowledgeable and surprising were not interested in up-selling my configuration, and in some cases suggested changes that actually decreased the price.
So finally I decided I had waiting long enough and called Maingear one last time, and after reviewing my configuration I decided to make a few changes based on their tech's suggestions, overall the price went up slightly but I ended up with double the space on my SSD, and immediately ordered via the website configuration utility.
Over the next couple weeks I got a BAD case of upgrade fever and actually called once to add in a soundcard and Chris Morley himself talked me out of the upgrade on the ground that I wouldn't see any benefit for the added price. Once again I was impressed that Maingear wasn't interested in selling me components just to jack the price up.
I ordered my rig on Saturday May 22nd and it arrived on Wednesday June 9th for a total of 18 days, it missed the UPS truck on Friday the 4th or it would likely have been delivered a couple days earlier.
The first thing I noticed was “HOLY CRAP THAT BOX IS HUGE!!!!”
UPS only had the unit for 48 hours they did manage to beat the box up fairly well, there was a few nice scraps in the sides and one of the corners, where the box was joined, was pretty well scraped up and the box was absolutely filthy (I actually had to clean the box before taking pictures of it because it was so dulled the pictures didn't show the damage.) The box was far from destroyed but showed far more “wear” that one would hope to see in a box holding over $4,000 worth of new computer. LOL!
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9972/1001902x.th.jpg (http://img532.imageshack.us/i/1001902x.jpg/)
Opening the box showed that the system was packed extremely well, and the idea to pack the rig in the box upside down is completely brilliant, it made unpacking virtually effortless. The box obviously it very well designed and extremely sturdy and protected the system extremely well.
Once the rig was out of the box I was thrilled with how beautiful the Shift case is, a number of people in the forums have said “pictures don't do it justice” and they are 100% correct, this case looks simply amazing. The finish, detailing and Maingear emblem are so awesome they make my Voodoo Rage case seem amateurish by comparison. When I took the bag off it my 10 year old son said “Wow! That's beautiful....... and HUGE!” :)
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2434/1001903r.th.jpg (http://img52.imageshack.us/i/1001903r.jpg/) http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2808/1001904.th.jpg (http://img29.imageshack.us/i/1001904.jpg/)
Included was a nice binder containing your disks and paperwork for the OS and components, a sheet outline all the steps your rig went through from pulling of the components all the way to packaging, with each step checked off by two different people to verify that they were completed. Other then that the binder contains your warranty information and some customer service information. Also included as a bunch of extra cables, connectors and screws, as well as a small folding Maingear branded multi-head screwdriver and a Maingear mousepad.
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/5484/1001908.th.jpg (http://img571.imageshack.us/i/1001908.jpg/) http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/753/1001910h.th.jpg (http://img532.imageshack.us/i/1001910h.jpg/)
Opening up the left side panel showed the wonder wiring job that helped make the insides as amazing as the outside. Moving the system proved to be a pleasant surprise as it is much lighter then I expected. Setting it up was simple and having the ports all on top makes things even easier then normal.
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6383/1001917h.th.jpg (http://img130.imageshack.us/i/1001917h.jpg/)
After a quick trip to the store to get an VGA to DVI adapter (I'm still using my 19” CRT while I shop for a nice LCD monitor) and I booted up my new rig and was simply stunned when it went from completely powered down to booted and ready to use in less then 40 seconds, all I can say is WOW!
The SSD in this rig not only makes the rig boot faster then anything I've ever seen but also loads games far faster then I could have imagined.
The rig is extremely quiet, especially when you consider it has an overclocked i7-930, a 1200 watt PS and an Ati 5970 videocard. Even my wife commented that it was a lot quieter then she expected (it's in our living room so we need something quiet since the room since there is three of us living here and while I'm gaming my wife or son might want to watch tv, read or simply sit in a quiet room.
Performance wise I can't say to much yet as I am still shopping for a 24” LCD monitor and such am using my old 19” Samsung CRT which runs at 1280x1024, but even on this dinosaur the image quality is stunning and it's nice to be able to crank every setting up as high as they'll go without bringing the system to a standstill.
Overall I am extremely happy with my purchase although there have been a few glitches. Firstly, much to my son's disappointment, we did not receive a t-shirt with my Shift (I ordered a medium for him since even the XXL would be to small for me as I am over 6' 8”.) I haven't gotten around to calling about it yet, been REAL busy with work (we are in the midst of trying for ISO certification), but I have faith that they will take care of it as soon as I go get a chance to call them when they are actually open.
Secondly my system seems to suffer from some apparently random instability. I haven't been able to track it to anything although I suspect a Windows due to the symptoms. For example as I wrote this in OpenOffice my system appeared to stop responding, then a minute or so later went to a black screen and stayed there, and upon rebooting it was unable to load windows properly, and even the Windows start up repair utility froze the first 3 times I attempted to use it and didn't find any issues when if finally ran. Keep in mind that the rig had run for almost 5 days without a reboot, so it's not a frequent issue, but this is the third time it has happened since I got it so I'll have to start keeping track to try and figure out the cause.
The only issue I have with the case is the pop up access for the USB, sound jacks and card reader, it locks in place when it's down but when it's open it just sort of sits loose at the top spot so when you plug anything into it tried to move downward and close. It's a minor issue but it would have been nice if it had some sort of latch to hold it open.
Finally there are few other minor issues and while they are not actually “problems” they left me slightly disappointed. First up is the binder, while it's put together very nice and professionally my windows disk had slide out of it's sleeve and was sliding around in the bottom of the box when I opened it. Also while the information in it was nice I would have liked to see some documentation on the Shift case itself, such as how to remove the cover, care and cleaning, etc.
Next is that the mousepad, while it looks sharp with the Maingear logo but I would have rather that it was a Maingear branded Everglide or Ratpad style hard mousepad, even if I had to select it when configuring the rig and pay extra for it. Lastly after I messed around with Win 7 themes a little was disappointed that Maingear hadn't taken the time to make all the included wallpapers into an actually Win 7 theme so the system would cycle through them (maybe one with light backgrounds and another with dark ones. Again these were minor issues that take nothing away from the awesomeness that is my Shift but it's just a few little things that could have been done to make an amazing experience even better.
Sorry for the wall of text, and I appologize if I rambled on but I wanted to make sure and cover everything.
MY SHIFT
MAINGEAR SHIFT Chassis with Advanced Vertical Heat Dissipation
Brushed Black Aluminum with Acrylic and Matte Black Accents
AcoustiPack Ultimate Sound Dampening
1.2KW Silverstone Zeus Modular Industrial Power Supply
ATIŽ Radeon™ HD 5970 2GB GDDR5 DX11 (only 1 for now.)
Asus Rampage III Extreme X58 Supporting CrossFire and SLI, USB 3.0, SATA 6G
IntelŽ CoreŽ i7-930 2.8GHz Quad-core with Hyperthreading
MAINGEAR / Asetek Maintenance-Free X120 Liquid Cooling
6GB Kingston HyperX Triple-Channel DDR3-2000MHz Low Latency
YES! - Redline™ Overclock My System!
256GB CrucialŽ RealSSD™ C300 SATA 6G (w/TRIM) (for OS and games)
1.0TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6G 7200rpm 64MB Cache (date storage drive)
All-in-One Integrated USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer
24X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology
7.1 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical Out
Dual On-board Gigabit Ethernet
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and Phone Support with 2 Year Hardware Warranty