CASE DESIGN, cooling solution, noise,
customer service—those are the features
that make or break a modern, prebuilt
gaming PC when all the hardware is
top quality. Maingear lets you choose
from one of four Vybe configurations
or completely customize a PC based on
your budget. Its top-of-the-line Vybe,
the one reviewed here, is a near-perfect
combination of hardware components,
price, and customer service.
Included with the Vybe is a red box
with a message from Maingear’s CEO,
a mouse pad, and a thick plastic zipper
pouch filled with extra cables and other
important stuff—all placed delicately
under wrapping paper. Judging from
this boutique-style attention to detail,
Maingear cares just as much about its
customers as it does its PCs.
That good first impression continues
with the Vybe itself. Inside the chassis,
there are two simple lighting strips—
no obnoxious RGB lighting oozing out
of every component. The lights dance
around the components like a metallic
rainbow if you have a cycling effect on—
all of which can be controlled with a
remote that fits in the palm of your hand.
T h e V y b e c a s e i s s i m i l a r t o N Z X T ’s H 7 0 0
series: covered bottom compartment for
the power supply and HDD bays; vertical
SSD SATA bays; space to mount the all-
in-one liquid cooler radiator either on
As close to perfection as
it gets for a prebuilt PC
Maingear Vybe
9
VERDICT Maingear VybeGOOD VIBES High-end spec
list for the price; classy RGB
lighting; dead silent.
BAD VIBES Less than 1TB SSD;
doesn’t come overclocked; case is larger
than some other PCs with the same specs.
$2,499, http://www.maingear.comSPECIFICATIONSProcessor
Intel Core i9-9900K
eight-core/16-thread
3.6GHz (5GHz turbo)
Graphics Nvidia GeForce RTX
2080 8GB GDDR6
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4
HyperX Predator
Motherboard MSI Z390 A-Pro
Primary Storage 512GB Intel 660p
M.2 NVME SSD
Additional Storage 2TB HDD
Cooling Solution Maingear Epic 240
Supercooler
PSU 750W EVGA SuperNOVA
B3 80+ Certified
Case Maingear Vybe Mark V
Warranty One-year comprehensive
warrantyOur desktop zero-point consists of an AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 16GB of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT @ 2,666, an EVGA
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, and a 250GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIe SSD. All tests were performed at 1080p at the
highest graphical profile.BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 1,152 2,175 (89%)
CrystalDisk QD32
Sequential Read (MB/s) 3,400 1,761 (-48%)
CrystalDisk QD32
Sequential Write (MB/s) 1,720^987 (-43%)
3DMark: Fire Strike (Index) 11,101 2 4 ,9 3 0 (12 5 %)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 60 134 (123%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps)^46 110 (139%)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon:
Wildlands (fps)^39 77 (97%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%the top or at the front. It’s easy to love
this case for all the same reasons as
NZXT’s lineup.
However, it has metal mesh panels on
top for extra airflow, and the I/O panel
is on the side of the chassis, rather than
the top. The Vybe has three USB 3.0 ports
and one USB-C port, compared to the
NZXT H700i’s two USB 2.0 and two USB
3.0 ports. It also doesn’t have that metal
bar to the right of the motherboard like
the NZXT case, which is wonderful—
cable management should be a lot easier
without it in the way.
The Vybe’s mid-tower size is a little
cumbersome, like the majority of PC
cases these days, but it makes up for that
with how quiet it is—exactly as hushed
as the Corsair One i160, which is hard
to match on the silence scale. You can
tell the two apart once you throw on a
graphically intensive game, but barely.
This is perhaps the quietest “traditional-
sized” PC ever.
There aren’t any surprises in store
performance-wise, as this configuration
comes with an Intel i9-9900K, GeForce
RTX 2080, and 16GB DDR4 RAM. The
512GB SSD is a minor downside, even if it
is an M.2 NVME SSD, but assuming you’re
using the SSD just for games, 512GB is
more than enough.
The CPU wasn’t overclocked, but
when it comes to benchmarks, the Vybescored 220 on single-core performance
in Cinebench and 2,175 on multicore. The
RTX 2080 smashed 1080p performance
with a 3DMark score of 24,930, and
consistently high fps performance in
our trio of in-game benchmarks on ultra
graphics, hitting an average of 110fps
in Total War: Warhammer II; 134fps in
Shadow of the Tomb Raider; and 77fps
in Ghost Recon: Wildlands. 3DMark
scores for 1440p and 4K were 13,710 and
6,845, respectively.
Turning on DirectX 12 in Tot al War:
Warhammer II dips the fps to 87. Real-
time ray-tracing benchmarks in 3DMark
scored 7,708 (35fps) at 1080p, but that’s
more demanding than current ray-
tracing games. Actual in-game frame
rates for Metro Exodus at 1080p on ultra
fluctuated between 90 and 60fps most of
the time. Intense combat drove the frame
rate to under 60fps, but was still playable.
This system costs $2,499 before taxes
and shipping charges—reasonable for
the spec. Maingear also offers lifetime
service labor and phone support, with a
base one-year comprehensive warranty,
so you’ll never have to worr y if something
goes wrong. So, this Vybe really is a near-
perfect prebuilt PC. –JOANNA NELIUSmaximumpc.com JUN 2019 MAXIMUMPC 79