Maingear SHIFT reviewed: $7,000 can shatter a lot of records
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 5th 2009 11:01AM
posted Nov 5th 2009 11:01AM
It's the priciest rig we've seen since we laid eyes on Alienware's latest gaggle of machines back at TGS, and it's not even from a company that you would generally take seriously in the gaming PC arena. But according to Computer Shopper, that small-man bias should be shelved, and fast. Maingear's newly unveiled SHIFT can be had for just over $2,000 if you stick with the basics, but CS managed to review a loaded-out $7,113 edition that produced "record-shattering performance." The "uncompromising design" and build quality was also lauded, through the college-fund shattering price tag prevented it from notching a 10/10 rating. Feel free to tap the read link for the full skinny, but honestly, this thing simply did exactly what it should've done for the price; anything less than world-beating would've been a disgrace at seven large.
You wanna see me run Crysis? You wanna see me run it again?
But can it run Doom 3?
That was kinda funny for a dated meme. Goodjob :)
In regard to Far Cry 2
"held pace at 170fps when cranked up to 2,560x1,600"
That's just silly, for the record.
On a side note GARMIN NO ONE WANTS YOUR STUPID NUVIFONE!
Yes, but Engadget needs Ad money.
but still... it's pretty horrible, and TOTALLY dated once Eclair goes live
Well I don't really have anything against the phone more the adds expanding all over my news!
Stop it! I need the nuvifone to sell well so that I can recover my losses on GRMN!
Use Firefox and Adblock Plus - you'll never know there were even supposed to be ads on the site, it takes them out that cleanly.
Fuck, at that kind of money I'd rather buy a car.
Yeah, I realise how that makes no sense!
at that kind of money i can buy a whole Mini Mobile PA Sound Reinforcement System or
a Netcafe computer rental business (gaming surfing etc) with around 20 units
and both my choices can earn me back the money i will spend.
anyways nice to know that such a supercomputer is available for the rich public.
Seriously, screw this. $7000?! Gotta be kidding me. Come to my small but heartfelt little operation and I'll build this myself if you can't do it yourself. www.clunkycomputers.com
Core i7 Extreme? That processor should never be purchased ever. Pay over $400 for an increase of 130MHz over a 960? 6GB ram for something like this is also little bit dumb. Also, has anyone seen how they are running the RAID? I would be supremely disappointed if the weren't running a PCI-E hardware raid card. Being that they used 3 Radeon 5870's, I assume they wouldn't have been able to fit a RAID card in there. Its not needed in general, but for 7 grand I'd expect a hardware RAID for that pair of SSD's... and while they're at it, make those triple or quad ssd's.
On second thought though, don't ask me to build something like this till these Radeon supply problems have been solved. Not sure I've ever seen a card sold out this badly!
$7,000 Price tag and only three gigs of Ram? (Closes stolen check book and walks away...) You almost had my check that would have bounced...
6 gigs:
Processor: 3.3GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition (overclocked to 3.98GHz)
Memory: 6GB DDR3
Storage : Two 80GB solid-state drives (RAID 0); one 2TB hard drive
Optical Drive: BD-ROM/DVD±RW combo
Monitor: None
Graphics: Three ATI Radeon HD 5870 cards (1GB DDR5 on each)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
This thing is a horrible ripoff... Everything is available on Newegg for far more reasonable prices. A 3000$ premium for OC'ing? LOL
Yeah, even 6GB seems kind of stingy here.
There's a refurb'ed eMachines on TigerDirect with 8GB of RAM for 10% of its price...
@Toni
And I'm sure it has all those other specs too? Gaming doesn't need a lot of ram
I'm sure with 90% difference it isn't hard to soup it up to those specs. Point being $7000 is overpriced.
Or better... buy 9 more of the boxes and cluster them. :P
Checking Newegg, everything in the $7k model only costs ~$3600. I highly doubt the case, cooling, motherboard and OCing could make up for the other $3400.
It doesn't even have a Blu-ray burner...
I agree. Plus overclocking to 3.98Ghz is not exactly difficult. Heck there are folks overclocking i5 and i7 mid-ranges to 4Ghz air cooled.
And dual 80GB SSD is a bit cheap for a build like this. I'd expect double that at least in a nice RAID 0 stripe.
Yeah, I cant believe at that price they give just a BD-ROM - not a burner! Talk about stingy. When you pay $7000 for a machine - everything in there should be the best there is given that they are taking a huge premium of several thousand dollars just for the overclock.
Maybe the use cheetah blood on all the parts.
@ tangandfarts
Phew, thanks - I almost bought one from Maingear!
im outta touch with pricings.
but how much woulda cost if i go to newegg n grab all the components myself?
scroll up slightly
And why would you be unable to build 2 or 3 computers with the same specs on your own? That price is more bloated than a dead deer on the highway on a hot summer day.
But why why why would you spend a mere $7000 on this hunk of junk when you could get a scan jellyfish http://www.scan.co.uk/shops/dreampc/jellyfish for just under £10k thats $16 606 and have a really fast computer
$7000 will get you phase change cooling and an extra i7-975 to practice overclocking on if you build it yourself
Let's do a quick pricecheck on newegg shall we?
i7 975 - $1000
EVGA Classified E760 - $400
3x HD 5870 - $1200
2x Intel SSD 80GB G2 - $550
Corsair Obsidian 800D Case - $300 (much higher quality than that piece of crap they're using...)
Prolimatech Megahalems + 2x high RPM Fans - $100 (again, beats the crap out of that mediocre asetek watercooling unit they used)
Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W PSU - $300 (probably the highest quality PSU money can buy right now)
2TB WD HDD - $200
6GB DDR3-2000 - $200
Total: $4250
In other words, this thing has a $2000 premium over a machine with identical/higher quality hardware...
Who does Maingear think they are? Apple?
Now buy a two year warranty with each item and compare the prices after that.
Best warranties you'll see by default are 1 year warranties and 'limited lifetime' on the RAM.
It becomes a bit more reasonable once you take that into account.
I would have to say they are being like Alienware, if they were trying to be like apple then it would have been at least $15,000
Yes correct. Like the People who buy Apple products, you would have to be an idiot to buy this machine when you can get something the same or better for a lot less money.
At this price I would hope you wouldn't need a warranty. I thought there would be a self defense system included...
How do you figure the warrenty is worth over $2500? You will be unlucky if even one part of that hardware would fail. Even if it did they normally fail within the first few days of use or right out the box. $4000 would be more like the amount i would pay for that machine even with a 3 year warrenty.
Actually most of these components have 3+ year warranties
Industry standard for CPU, GPU, Motherboard warranty is 3 years (though EVGA has lifetime for the their high-end boards and as does XFI for their GPUs), industry standard for HDDs and PSUs is 5 years (the Intel SSD only has 3 years though), and for the ram it's lifetime as you mentioned.
I guess having a whole system warranty is worth something but IMO it's a lot less convenient and more costly than RMAing individual components.
I think you guys are forgetting... we (the self-built-computer types) aren't the type they're aiming this at.
they're aiming it trust-fund kids, the military guy that has more than enough money to throw around and would rather just burn the cash than learn how to do it himself, and the rich family-man geek that doesn't have the time to put in the component testing to make sure that all of the options work together.
there is also something to be said for the cleanliness of the build and the custom overlay they did on that Raven01. Also, a complete system warranty can be very nice. one-stop shop for those with the cash. I'll admit it, if I had that kind of cash to just blow on things, I'd get this just to be sure that I had a no-nonsense machine as my main gaming rig. I'd satisfy my lust for hand-picking components for the other machines in my house and the machines I build for others.
/sulks away to his paltry- underpowered- gimp desktop. ='(
$2000 premium? Try $2750! Don't know about you, but to some of us $750 is a lot of money!
Prokanda is right. These rigs are for people who don't want to build their own or could care less about building their own or the added price. Personally, I always build my own and have all the test equipment i need on hand so if my rig ever goes down I can have the problem addressed in minutes and but a new part locally or at Newegg if need be. One day downtime max, that is something they can't guarantee.
Shows how often I have to use a warranty.
The last time I had to use a warranty was a motherboard from newegg that they graciously handled after I pinpointed the problem to the board at 31 days after purchase (though it sounds like I could have talked to the manufacturer if NewEgg wasn't helpful).
The time before that was... literally 10 years ago when I had a hdd die on me.
Things usually die 4+ years after purchase for me, I guess.
Apologies for the misinformation then.
I'm thinking it would have been better marketing if the computer was priced at 1337$, but then they'd just be losing money....
With that kind of money, I could easily buy a cheap car.
for that type of money i did buy a car, and it was cheaper than that.
It is funny, for $7000+, you would think they woould thwo in a BD-RW and bigger SDDs but nope...
I think Engadget needs to check out this rig over at MAXIMUMPC and see pricey and powerful
N.B. This is using Server grade SSDs in RAID 0
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/velocity_micro_raptor_signature_edition
If I had that kind of money, I can pay off my remaining car payments.
And if you do have that kind of money to spend for that computer, I don't think 'large; heavy' would be on your short list or worries.
@ Barri are you implying that everyone who buys an Apple computer is an idiot?
I work in music publishing and we are 100% Mac environment. We have 4 printers, 2000+ fonts, require color and postscript exactness using 2 operating systems (OSX Leopard and Tiger, and OS9 [clsssic]). Our server is a G5 x-serve that has run continuously for 4+ years with 0... and I mean ZERO downtime, serving to OS9 machines, and OSX machines through every flavor up to Leopard.
Any issue with a computer is usually fixed within minutes (repair permission of this folder, restart classic, restart your machine and try again). The longest downtime of any client machine has been a warranty repair for a blown motherboard. This is out of 20ish macs ranging from G4 oldies to brand new core 2 duos. We still have 3 G4s running with all original parts after 5+ years of use, every weekday for 8 hours.
This all being said, I use a PC at home because I am a gamer.
We can say quite the same thing about Linux machine that would cost 1/3 of Mac.
And.. my office computer that runs Windows XP is running 24 hours a day 5 days a week (I turn it off when I go home on Friday) without single crash since I started working (that's 3 years ago). Oh, and I never had any issues with my computer.
Mac is great, but it's still over-priced.