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Maingear’s Vybe desktop is ‘soft on the wallet,’ Nomad and Pulse get updated

System builder Maingear made a couple of announcements on Thursday, the first of which was the launch of its new Vybe high-end desktop. Not only is this system optimized for VR and PC gaming, the company says Vybe is “soft on the wallet” with a starting price of just $1,000. This desktop is fully customizable, of course, because that’s the nature of Maingear’s business model. But you have to be careful with that shopping cart, as all those added hardware treats could fatten up the final bill to a surprising extent.

The Vybe desktop is actually served up in two base flavors: one based on the Intel H110 or Z170 chipset ($1,000), and one based on the X99 chipset ($1,600). The former configuration offers options for Intel’s four-core Skylake processors while the latter configuration supports Intel’s meatier six-to-ten-core Broadwell-E processors. Check them out:

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H110/Z170 X99
Core i5-6500 @ 3.2GHz/3.6GHz (default) Core i7-6800K @ 3.4GHz/3.6GHz (default)
Core i5-6600K @ 3.5GHz/3.9GHz (+$85) Core i7-6850K @ 3.6GHz/3.8GHz (+$270)
Core i7-6700 @ 3.4GHz/4GHz (+$160) Core i7-6900K @ 3.2GHz/3.7GHz (+$845)
Core i7-6700K @ 4GHz/4.2GHz (+$210) Core i7-6950X @ 3GHz/3.5GHz (+$1,505)

Here are the rest of the hardware goodies provided in the default configurations:

H110/Z170 X99
Asus H110M-A motherboard MSI X99A Raider
Maingear Certified Intel Retail Cooler Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo Advanced Air Cooler
2x 4GB HyperX Fury DDR4 memory @ 2,666MHz 4x 4GB HyperX Fury DDR4 memory @ 2,666MHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB AMD Radeon RX 460 2GB
500-watt EVGA 80 Plus Certified power supply 750-watt EVGA SuperNova 80 Plus Certified
1TB Seagate 7,200RPM hard drive 1TB Seagate 7,200RPM hard drive, 24x DVD-RW
On-board HD 8-channel audio On-board HD 8-channel audio
Gigabit Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet
Windows 10 Home 64-bit Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Both desktops provide plenty of options to fit your PC gaming and VR needs. There are actually three more bays for installing hard drives or solid state disks in RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5 configurations. A wireless component can be thrown in for an additional price along with special chassis lighting, enhanced thermal interface material, Maingear’s overclocking service, and so on.

Note that both models provide graphics card options extending up to two of Nvidia’s latest GeForce GTX Titan X cards in SLI mode for an additional $2,876.  If you’d rather play on Team AMD, two Radeon RX 480 cards (8GB each) in CrossFire mode cost $430 while two Radeon R9 Nano cards (4GB each) in CrossFire mode cost $1,139.

As for the second announcement Maingear made on Thursday, the company said that its Nomad and Pulse PC gaming notebooks now serve up options for Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 graphics cards by default. The Nomad 17 model has a starting price of $2,400 and the Pulse 15 has a starting price of $2,150. Here are the default specs of each:

Pulse 15 Nomad 17
15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 display 17-inch 1,920 x 1,080 @ 120Hz display
Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.6GHz/3.5GHz Intel Core i5-6500 CPU @ 3.2GHz/3.6GHz
2x 8GB DDR4 memory @ 2,133MHz 2x 4GB DDR4 memory @ 2,133MHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 8GB
256GB M.2 NVME SSD n/a
1TB 7,200RPM 2.5-inch HDD 1TB 7,200RPM 2.5-inch HDD
8x Asus DVD burner (external) 8x Asus DVD burner (external)
2.1 channel sound via 4 speakers, 1 sub-woofer HD Audio
Qualcomm Killer E2200 online gaming accelerator Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless AC up to 867Mbps, Bluetooth Wireless AC, Bluetooth
Windows 10 Home 64-bit Windows 10 Home 64-bit
6-cell Li-Polymer 5400mAh 60Wh battery Battery info not provided
Full HD webcam (1080p @ 30FPS) 2MP webcam
SD card reader SD card reader

Note that the Nomad 17 model provides only two graphics options: the default GTX 1070 8GB and the GTX 1080 8GB version for an added $515 on the final bill. However, the Pulse 15 model only serves up the default GeForce GTX 1060 6GB option.

Kevin Parrish
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
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