Maingear F131 Super Stock: Real Power in a Quiet Package

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Natural philosophy-dampening panels keep things quiet
Readily accessible internal bays

Our Finding of fact

Maingear's F131 Super Stock clambers to the upper side of our mainstream chart in a hard-fought battle.

Maingear F131 Super Stock mainstream desktop PC

Editor in chief's Bill: Sometimes, numbers just don't seem quite honourable. We took another view our data, and after a bit of troubleshooting and testing, assembled fresh gaming results. The F131 Super Stock ultimately earned 199.8 frames per second on our Unreal Tournament Benchmark (information technology previously attained 131.1 frames per second), right succeeding with our SLI expectations.

Maingear returns to the big top of our mainstream-Personal computer chart with another desktop carrying Super Inventory options. Priced at $2224 (atomic number 3 of April 21, 2020), the Maingear F131 Super Stock manages to hang with–and even exceed–entirely comparable to competitors.

At a glance, it's difficult to tell the difference 'tween this system and the previous Maingear F131 we reviewed in August–divagation from the absence of the giant, laser-etched skull, of course. But the differences are much skin deep. Rip the cover off, and you can well see where the Super Stockpile options come in. The updated F131 Super Stock sports a speedy ordinal-generation Core i5-2500K CPU overclocked to a stunning 5GHz. You'll obtain 8GB of Force, as well, with two empty DIMM slots to fill later. A 7200-rpm 1TB drive accompanies a 250GB solid-DoS drive, allowing for some supreme memory and speed. (Unfortunately, although Maingear certainly didn't hold back with the hardware, the case is admittedly a bit dull.)

Thanks to two Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti art cards arranged in SLI, you obtain a solid play machine without having to splurge on a utmost-remnant graphics card. The cards pop the question four DVI and deuce mini-HDMI outputs. In our Unreal Tourney 3 bench mark (2560-by-1600-pel resolution, highest settings), the system earbed 199.8 frames per second. This outgoing paces the Maingear Vybe Super Stock (129.9 FPS) running a single, slenderly stronger card (the Nvidia Geforce GTX 570). The similarly equipped Origin Genesis Midtower earned 193 frames per second — a negligible difference. Confused about the benefits of running deuce cards versus one high-end board? Checker out Alex Wawro's guide on to SLI and CrossFire for a rundown of the pros and cons.

In our WorldBench 6 tests the F131 Super Inventory, armed with its overclocked processor and good-state drive off, annihilated the competition with an astonishing score of 215. For comparison, the mainstream variant of the Origin Book of Genesis Midtower accepted a mark of 206 in the same tests. The runner-heavenward Maingear Vybe got a score of 207. Not to notice the obvious, merely that is rather a notable difference.

Although the chassis is a bit of a bore on the extracurricular, it supplies many slap-up features and plenty of ports to keep all your accessories connected. The black brushed-aluminum sheath sports the Super Stock logo along the position. Regrettably, the machine has no side fan. I detect that side fans greatly help to keep graphics cards cool; information technology can be an most-valuable factor maintaining a steady PC, especially when running two cards at at one time. The front offers a readily accessible multiformat card reader, the Videodisc burner, and a single USB port. On tip is a small indented arena for holding varied electronic devices (or a cup, if you'ray brave plenty). This tray has another pair of USB ports, a FireWire port, and the headphone and microphone jacks.

In the behind are a embarrassment of USB ports–eight, to be exact–and a pair of lightning-fast USB 3.0 ports. The F131 Large Stock also includes an eSATA port wine, PS/2 ports, a FireWire port, and 7.1-channel analog and optical audio options.

Eastern Samoa for connectivity, the F131 Super Caudex covers all the bases and then just about, supplying you with a gigabit ethernet left besides as an 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth adapter. They are integrated right into the sheath, leaving more than space on the motherboard for whatever else you may need to install in the PCI slots.

Maingear designed the F131 Super Unoriginal with PC enthusiasts in mind, making interior access loose and (by and large) tool-free. A couple of thumb screws and a small latch release the case's side instrument panel. The first matter you may notice is the soft, plush material on the wrong of the panels; this acoustic dampening keeps stochasticity inside the case, making the organisation near inexplicit. The drive bays are also substance abuser friendly, needing nothing more than than a simple screwdriver. The system has six 3.5-in internal bays with racks that microscope slide in and securely lock into place for easy installation, as well as four 5.25-inch bays that use a similar, joyride-free implementation. The wires are all bully and organized, meticulously hidden when potential to give the interior an open, clean look. The arrangement gives you plenty of room to tinker around if necessary, and it's swell for airflow.

The Maingear F131 Super Line is a fast, powerful Personal computer, but it does sit at the high end of the mainstream class. For unfinished processing power, this auto sets some new standards in the mainstream family. In gaming performance it's right in line of business with the $2254 Origin Genesis Midtower. Although the two computers' builds and prices are similar, the Genesis Midtower offers twice as so much RAM, with a pair of casebook hard drives (in Bust 0) to continue the be competitive. If you'd instead have another option, you can save about $400 with the Maingear Vybe Super Unoriginal.