Maingear Rush Review: Stunning Gaming Showpiece

Our Verdict

The Maingear Rush Superstock offers a highly customizable desktop with superb performance and fast transfer speeds — if you lot're willing to spend a small-scale fortune.

For

Jaw-dropping design
Powerful graphics and overall performance
Highly customizable

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Maingear Rush Superstock offers a highly customizable desktop with superb performance and fast transfer speeds — if you're willing to spend a small fortune.

Pros

+
Jaw-dropping design
+
Powerful graphics and overall functioning
+
Highly customizable

Maingear is like the Aston Martin of gaming desktops — its PCs are opulent art pieces that double as loftier-performance mechanism. The company's latest rig, the Rush Superstock (starting at $1,799, reviewed at $vii,927), packages high-terminate components — such as an octa-core Intel Core i7 processor, an Asus Rampage V Extreme motherboard and 3 Nvidia GeForce 980 Ti GPUs — housed in an exquisite chassis fabricated of aluminum and tempered glass. The result is a gaming rig that will garner more than its fair share of oohs and aahs, whether you're showing it off to friends or kicking ass in your favorite game.

Design: The Beautiful Ones

To quote the legendary artist Prince, "I only wanted to meet you underneath the regal rain." Since its arrival, I've been sneaking back to the lab to peak at this amethyst beauty, counting downward the minutes until nosotros could exist together. The fascination has but intensified since I've started actually using the Blitz Superstock.

(Image credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide)

Now, I can take time to admire and run my fingers over the cool brushed Volt Violet aluminum chassis that's been chemically painted using ElectroColor, the same procedure used to color iPhones. The end result is a end that's extremely durable and breathtakingly beautiful. A slender strip of blackness plastic along the forepart of the rig informs me in simple white font that this is a Maingear car.

The Rush Superstock is extremely durable and breathtakingly beautiful.

As tantalizing as the aluminum is, the two tempered glass panels on the desktop's sides are the real stars of the bear witness. The transparent sides act equally literal windows into this behemoth'southward soul, and information technology's hard to expect abroad. Maingear has strategically placed white LEDs effectually the fans and battery so you can adore the painstaking detail that was put into creating this arrangement. The white nylon-braided cables are woven throughout the black matte interior, held meticulously in place by individual brackets.

Credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide — (Epitome credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide)

While the Violet is visually stunning, Maingear offers 16 colour options in either its traditional high-gloss automotive paint or the ElectroColor end for $399. The nine interior paint options ($399 for standard, $499 for a custom finish) are express to car paint. Yous can besides choose from seven colors for the LED lighting.

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For god'due south sake, any you lot do, please lift this PC with your knees. Measuring 24 x 21.5 x 8.6 and weighing an even eighty pounds, the Rush Superstock takes up a nice clamper of real estate in your gaming den. It makes the OriginPC Millennium (60 pounds, 21.4 x 24.8 x ix.75 inches) or the Alienware Area-51 (59 pounds, 22.4 10 25.2 x 10.7 inches) seem like featherweights by comparison.

Liquid Cooling: Cull Your Color

Maingear never does annihilation half-assed, and that includes its liquid cooling system. You'll detect the visitor's handcrafted difficult crystal tubing along the desktop's major components, including the motherboard and GPU, secured past metal fittings. The liquid in our tube is a lovely lilac color, but Maingear will also do custom hues to lucifer the color to a client's specifications.

In addition to the premium tubing, the desktop has 2 Copper Cadre radiators (240 millimeter and 320 millimeter) that house several high-power fans. Using the company'south Intuitive Airflow Control engineering, the fans' speeds are controlled by the motherboard, allowing for quick adjustments co-ordinate to temperature and system functioning.

Whether I was hacking and spellcasting my style through The Witcher three: Wild Hunt, writing this review or stealing a few moments to watch the latest flavour of Daredevil, the Rush's fans were pretty quiet. At its loudest, the well-nigh I heard was a gentle purr every bit the fans pulled in air to cool down the system.

Ports and Expandability

Because you lot can never accept too many ports and jacks, the Rush Superstock gives you a plethora of connections to utilize at your leisure. Along the lesser right, you'll observe three USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, ii headset jacks and the power push button for the LEDs. But that's but the beginning, because in the dorsum are 10 more USB three.0 ports, 2 USB two.0 ports for the motherboard, an sometime-school PS/ii port for a mouse or keyboard, Ethernet, 5 sound ports and an Due south/PDIF input. As far equally the graphics cards, each has a DVI port, HDMI and three DisplayPorts.

Accessing the dorsum of the desktop is simple as removing the iv large purple screws holding the removable panel in place. The aforementioned goes for the tempered-glass panels.

Gaming and Graphics: Permit's Become Crazy

The Rush Superstock looks totally amazing, but how's the gaming? Sporting iii Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPUs in SLI formation with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each, the Rush makes fragging and questing feel pretty freaking sugariness. Even better, the GPUs are optimized for Nvidia's G-Sync technology and are VR-fix, so when you're gear up to go virtual, all you'll need to do is plug in your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive and swoop in.

As I explored the lands of Novigrad in The Witcher iii: Wild Hunt, I wished I could live in the globe gorgeously rendered at 45 frames per second on ultra at 3840 x 2160 (4K). Decreasing the setting to loftier raised the frame rate to 60, while a downgrade to medium netted 68 fps. And while more frames are unremarkably a practiced thing, I wanted to play every game at its highest settings with these kinds of specs.

The white LEDs let you adore the painstaking item that was put into creating this organisation.

The desktop produced a 186 fps frame rate at high on 1080p during the Rainbow Six benchmark, topping the 144 fps desktop average and the Millennium's 153 fps (Dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPUs). When the resolution rose to 4K, the Rush Superstock's results brutal to 65 fps. Still, that was more than than enough to pinnacle the 46 fps average and the Millennium's 53 fps.

During the GPU-taxing Metro: Last Light benchmark, the Rush Superstock achieved 90 fps on high at 1080p. That'south well above the 55 fps boilerplate, as well every bit the Alienware Expanse-51'southward 77 fps (3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPUs) and the Millennium's 30 fps. Moving to 4K, the Rush Superstock was just a frame shy of our 30 fps playability threshold at 29 fps. However, information technology was enough to crush the 17 fps average, as well as the Area-51 (26 fps) and the Millennium (23 fps).

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Performance

The Rush Superstock is a multitasking champion, thanks to its octa-core 4-GHz Intel i7-5960X processor with 16GB of RAM. I had no problem streaming an episode of House of Cards with xiii open tabs in Google Chrome, all while playing Witcher iii in a divide window and running an antivirus browse.

The desktop performed swimmingly on constructed tests, scoring 34,234 on Geekbench three, which measures overall functioning. That was more than enough to acme the 17,101 desktop average as well equally the Millennium'southward 20,365 (4.8-GHz Intel Core i7-6700K CPU) and the Area-51's 21,060 (3.5-GHz Intel Core i7-5930K).

Thanks to its 256GB M.two PCIe SSD, the Rush Superstock has blink-and-you'll-miss-it transfer speeds. The Purple Data Eater transferred 4.97GB of multimedia files in 11 seconds, which translates to a scorching 457.1MBps. That roasts the 230.6MBps boilerplate and the Area-51'southward 256GB SSD (221MBps). However, the Maingear was no match for the Millennium's 512GB SSD, which delivered a blistering 621.3MBps.

Sporting three Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPUs, the Rush makes fragging and questing experience pretty freaking sugariness.

On the OpenOffice Spreadsheet Macro Examination, the Rush Superstock paired 20,000 names and addresses in 2 minutes and 59 seconds, beating the 3:36 average. The Area-51 delivered a time of 3:50, while the Millennium clocked in with a faster two:36.

Software and Warranty

For such a heavy piece of mechanism, the Rush Superstock is refreshingly light on software. Besides your usual Windows ten apps, you have MSI Afterburner for overclocking the GPU and Nvidia GeForce Feel, which lets y'all optimize graphics settings for your games.

Coin tin can't purchase you dearest, but it tin buy you an absolutely sick desktop.

The Maingear Shift Superstock comes with Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and phone support with a one-year warranty.

Configurations

Coin can't purchase y'all love, only it can purchase you an absolutely sick desktop. The $seven,972 configuration of the Rush Superstock I reviewed is outfitted with an Asus Rampage V Farthermost motherboard, an octa-core four-GHz Intel i7-5960X processor with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB M.ii PCIe SSD with a 1TB SSD and iii Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPUs in SLI germination with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each. That as well includes such bells and whistles equally the ElectroColor paint, custom lighting and cooling arrangement, simply to name a few.

If you don't have $8,000 lying around, the $1,799 base model features an MSI Z170 PC Mate motherboard, a iii.ii-GHz Intel Core i5-6500 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 250GB SSD, a 2TB vii,200-rpm hard drive, a DVD burner and an AMD Radeon R7 360 graphics card with 2GB of VRAM. From at that place, you can add in pricier, more powerful components based on your needs.

Bottom Line

If you're searching for quality components, fantabulous gaming operation and head-turning blueprint, await no further than the Maingear Rush Superstock. At a whopping $7,972, consumers tin can expect a desktop crammed to the gills with powerful parts like an octa-core Intel Core i7 processor and three Nvidia 980 Ti cards that consistently throw graphical haymakers. If you desire a truly personalized system, you can add tweaks such as custom paint, lighting and cooling systems.

However, if spending nearly $eight,000 seems exorbitant, the Origin Millennium can be configured similarly for $four,206. It'due south nonetheless pretty pricy, but desktops like these are as much artistic showcases as they are gaming powerhouses. If coin's no object, the Maingear Rush Superstock is definitely the way to go.

Sherri L. Smith has been cranking out product reviews for Laptopmag.com since 2011. In that time, she'southward reviewed more than her share of laptops, tablets, smartphones and everything in betwixt. The resident gamer and audio junkie, Sherri was previously a managing editor for Black Web ii.0 and contributed to BET.Com and Popgadget.