There’s something special about building a PC by hand. I still have good memories my first tower. But we have to face the facts: Some people don’t have the time or patience to identify all the parts they need and the knowledge to put them all together. Custom PC maker Maingear has been in the game for years, and judging by the MG-1, the company knows what the PC gamer crowd wants: customization, high-quality components, and plenty of RGB.
Maingear gave me their legendary MG-1 desktop with a special surprise in the box. The company included a flat panel with a military-style blue and black pattern for our review unit and the Gizmodo logo emblazoned on the front. A custom front panel usually costs an additional $100.
Of course, it was a way to warm us up before we spent time on their product, but at the very least, it also gives a glimpse of Maingear’s philosophy with the MG-1. It’s a classic mid-range desktop case in many important ways. The components glow with all the milky RGB light you’d want in action, but fit easily into or under your desktop. That custom-made, removable front plate is like the cherry on top of a thick vanilla ice cream cone. It’s a good thing about Maingear that vanilla is my favorite flavor.
The Legend of Maingear MG-1
The Maingear MG-1 is a solid build from a company that clearly knows what it’s doing. The Legendary can pretty much handle any game you throw at it.
Benefits
- Excellent build quality and cable management
- A beautiful, customizable front plate
- Quiet even under pressure
Evil
- LED light strips feel very DIY with professional construction
The advantage of a pre-built system is that Maingear knows that the components work together and that they fit inside its jazzed up and custom AiO CPU cooler case. Looks great, especially the liquid cooler and the infinity mirror. When you open it, you will find two RGB LED strips running along the bottom compartment and the side near the front fans. You can’t see it unless you’re staring at the glass side panel up. If the PC is sitting on your desk, there is no need to worry. When they are near your feet, those LED strips look very DIY for the additional price of a pre-built PC.
My version of the MG-1 came with 2 TB of SSD storage, an Intel Core i9-14900K, 32 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super. It will cost less than $3,400 if you pick up all the parts on Maingear’s website. That’s a cheap price, but not out of line, considering the RTX 4080 Super is around $1,000. An Intel Core i9 may come in at a little under $500. It’s a cost of convenience, but there are additional benefits to buying a PC with custom components. The good guys at Maingear have a solid cable management that puts any of my previous efforts to shame.
A modern version of the MG-1 Legendary without any customization starts at $2,700, less than the price of Alienware Aurora R16 and performance comparison details. It’s a more upgradeable PC with two spare RAM slots and additional PCI-e slots.
Company again offers new versions of its lineup featuring AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 and 9 CPUs. When you buy, you’re cementing your allegiance to the AMD or Intel ecosystem, but given that systems like the MG-1 Legendary start at $2,800 with what’s considered a solid chip, it’s worth serious consideration compared to Intel’s range.
Maingear MG-1 Review: Build Quality
Maingear has made a point of telling me that they want to offer more like the usual Windows 11 experience with their PC. It packs a few components from MSI, and if you’re not careful, you can accidentally install all the missing bloatware you intended on your PC. If you’re like me, and you test a lot of products at once, like Razer’s a giant glowing mouse, Blackwidow Keyboardand more, it won’t be long before your PC is filled to the gills with applications that want to start at startup.
As I said before, I enjoy all the RGB that floods the MG-1’s cavity, save for the single line of LED light that runs down the floor. It would look very neat to diffuse the light with a single piece of opaque plastic. Otherwise, my favorite additional doohickey is the CPU liquid cooler unit with the slick infinity mirror effect. It clicks with an MSI motherboard to provide a clean-looking interior that doesn’t try to pretend it’s not a PC.
The side panel is held together by four thumb screws that take longer to remove than I’m used to with most custom cases. The side panel then slides back and forth, revealing those pesky LED strips and a custom-mounted GPU bracket. The mount is made of 3D printed plastic, but the 4080 Super is so securely mounted that it doesn’t even move after pulling it. The downside is that you’ll need to remove the front panel entirely to access the screws that hold the graphics card in place.
Still, the PC is well put together. I removed the backplate and found excellent cable management that keeps every cable secure while explaining where each one goes. And you have to give Maingear services for its customizable front plate. It locks with a few magnets and stays secure despite accidental knocks or jolts.
This beast is silent, most of the time. The fan systems are not used to the power of the helicopter, even if it is under pressure. In particular, the low noise only made my co-workers at the desks next to me look up in curiosity rather than annoyance.
Maingear MG-1 Review: Performance
Legendary is a system designed for high-performance gaming. I shouldn’t have told you that, should I? Check out the details; you can already tell that this system handles well, going up to native 4K without overclocking at the highest settings in demanding games. No, it won’t give you the exact edge of what’s possible on a PC without an RTX 4090, but it should be more than enough.
I played and compared many games at 4K resolution. The Intel Core i9-1400K is a powerful CPU, although it may not be as high-end as the latest AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D that you get in the latest version of the MG-1 Legendary. The 4080 Super and the CPU together are enough to help you hit 60 FPS or more at 4K or ultrawide (3440 by 1400) resolutions.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be compromises. With ray tracing set to ultra, I can hit 50 FPS on Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks at sub-4K without upscaling or framerate, but when I add DLSS quality set to default, I was pushing past 100 FPS. At 4K resolution, you will need an additional boost from DLSS to reach 60 with all ray tracing configurations and higher or higher settings.
It’s the same situation in other games I’ve tested. Horizon: The Forbidden West ran smooth as butter, too The Dark Legend Wukong it wasn’t the same, even when i turned off the climb. It’s a game like that Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 it needed a little more help upscaling to 4K with all settings set to their maximum, but even with native lean, it wasn’t dipping below 49 FPS as the Tyrranids swarmed everywhere.
The CPU in my review unit is not what you get with the MG-1 Legendary unless you build it yourself. Still, the Intel Core i9-14900K is a solid processor for a machine of this type. It still beats the Intel Core i9-14900KF in single-core and multi-core CPU benchmarks by Geekbench and Cinebench. 14th generation Intel CPUs under intense scrutiny for their recent instability issues, of course good enough to want to stay away until Intel finally confirm everything is in ship shape.
Maingear MG-1 Review: Verdict
On the face of it, the MG-1 is a sleek, functional PC that leaves plenty of room for future customization. You may want to grab a piece of quarter light pipe to make the LED strips move more throughout the design, but that’s a tricky issue for such a solid construction.
There isn’t a lot of space left, and the size can constrain you if you’ve ever wanted more than two SSDs on a motherboard. I will also be wary of the future The release of the Nvidia RTX 50-seriesas we still don’t know how big they might be. At the very least, the motherboard supports gen-5 PCI-e slots for the future, GPUs could be worse.
But at this point, there isn’t a single game you can’t play on MG-1 Legendary specs. It’s a solid machine that won’t need much upgrading for years, save for the usual TLC a PC deserves. A customized front panel provides just the right amount of contrast. The MG-1 may seem humble, but that’s because it knows it doesn’t need to compete.
Source link
