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Maingear Vybe Super Stock

10.02.2011
The Maingear Vybe Super Stock ($1849 as of February 9, 2011) is an encouraging sign, representative of the changes we've seen on our . Though it's relatively small, it packs an impressive amount of power into its frame---without making compromises.

Equipped nearly identically to the rest of the Sandy Bridge-based performance desktops that have passed through the Labs, the Maingear Vybe Super Stock has been fitted with the second-generation Core i7-2600K processor, overclocked to 4.8GHz. That CPU, coupled with 8GB of RAM and a speedy 60GB SSD (with an additional 1TB drive for storage), helped the Vybe earn a score of 207 on our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite.

A bit of perspective: Maingear's last entry, the , achieved a mark of 203 on WorldBench 6--and cost $8000. Granted, that machine carried the first-generation Core technology. Among competition, the latest ($2000) reached a score of 184 in WorldBench 6. The Vybe Super Stock and the Genesis Midtower are similarly equipped, but slight differences in their layout make a world of difference at the user level (more on that in a bit).

Gaming performance on the Vybe (and the Genesis Midtower) comes courtesy of an card. It's a powerful graphics board, and the results speak for themselves. On our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark, the Vybe generated 130 frames per second. Origin's Genesis Midtower achieved 141 fps. In Call of Duty 4, we saw 79 fps on the Vybe and 81 fps on the Genesis Midtower. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is a bit more strenuous: In that game, the Vybe hit 31 fps, while the Genesis Midtower reached 32 fps.

Of the two systems, the Vybe Super Stock boasts the stronger WorldBench 6 score (thanks to its solid-state drive and its extra helping of RAM); gaming performance is close. This match-up ultimately boils down to the chassis, but picking a "winner" is largely dependent on taste.

The Vybe Super Stock is small--disarmingly so, at first blush. But Maingear has a habit of doing things a bit differently. The Shift's vertically mounted GPUs and motherboard are one example, and the Vybe offers another. Pull off the case side (thumbscrews hold it on), and you'll find a rather confusing arrangement: The power supply is up front, sitting beneath the hard-drive bays. And the motherboard? It's upside down.