Maingear Vybe
As close to perfection as it gets for a prebuilt PC
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.
The Vybe case is similar to NZXT’s H700 series: covered bottom compartment for the power supply and HDD bays; vertical SSD SATA bays; space to mount the allin-one liquid cooler radiator either on 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 “traditionalsized” 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 Vybe scored 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 TotalWar:WarhammerII; 134fps in Shadowof the TombRaider; and 77fps in GhostRecon:Wildlands. 3DMark scores for 1440p and 4K were 13,710 and 6,845, respectively.
Turning on DirectX 12 in Total War: WarhammerII dips the fps to 87. Realtime ray-tracing benchmarks in 3DMark scored 7,708 (35fps) at 1080p, but that’s more demanding than current raytracing games. Actual in-game frame rates for MetroExodus 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 worry if something goes wrong. So, this Vybe really is a nearperfect prebuilt PC. –JOANNA NELIUS
VERDICT 9
Maingear Vybe
GOOD 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, www.maingear.com