Maingear X-Cube (Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800) review: Maingear X-Cube (Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800)

Maingear may not have changed its X-Cube's case since we last looked at one about a year ago, but the hardware and software on the 2007 model are entirely brand new. With the latest in everything, this high-end, semiportable gaming system has a comparable price tag, coming in around $4,570 at the time of this writing. For the most part, it delivers the performance and features to match. It's also a very attractive system. With PC gaming in such a state of flux at the moment, it's hard to make any definitive statements about this X-Cube's future prospects. But if we had money to burn on a high-end PC and wanted to keep things small, we would have few qualms about picking up a system such as this for fast performance.

When we said the X-Cube has the latest of everything, we weren't joking. Its 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 quad-core processor and 768MB GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card are both very new parts--the 3D card is barely a week old--and they both currently lead their respective categories in terms of raw performance. This system has 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM for memory, and a single 750GB 7,200rpm hard drive for storage. You have room to upgrade the memory and add another hard drive, and Maingear offers faster 10K drives or roomier 1TB drives, should you need more or speedier hard-drive storage.

To measure the X-Cube's performance, we've compared it to a number of different gaming systems, ranging from an Editor's Choice-winning, $5,760 Dell XPS 710 H2C to a more modest, bang-for-the-buck-oriented $2,750 AVADirect Core 2 Duo SLI. The results we saw were surprising, both pleasantly and otherwise. Its Photoshop and iTunes scores makes sense, given that the faster systems have either faster hard drives or more memory. We didn't expect the X-Cube's chart-topping CineBench numbers, though, since we're used to that test benefiting most from CPU speed. The 3.2GHz Dell should have been faster if that was all that mattered. We suspect that the Maingear's faster 800MHz memory helped it gain an edge, since the Dell has only 667MHz of RAM. For common multimedia application performance, the X-Cube performs as expected or better, which is to say, very fast.

Gaming was a somewhat different story. We wouldn't expect the X-Cube and its single GeForce 8800 Ultra to beat the Dell and its pair of GeForce 8800 GTX cards, but that the Polywell and its single, older GeForce 8800 GTX beat it on Quake 4 was surprising. Granted, the Polywell has a faster CPU clock, but we're more inclined to attribute the X-Cube's laggard Quake 4 scores to the fact that it's running in Vista, while the Polywell's scores are XP-based. The Maingear triumphs over the other single-card PCs in F.E.A.R., which shows that not all games will suffer from Vista slowdown, but that this $4,757 X-Cube can't beat a six-month-old Polywell--that even half a year ago cost $1,100 less--would be a hard pill to swallow if that was our money. Our hope is that with time, Nvidia's drivers will improve to handle Vista gaming better. We can't guarantee anything, though.

You should also consider the overall state of the PC gaming market right now. First, ATI has a whole family of new 3D cards right around the corner. You would be wise to wait to see how their performance stacks up to Nvidia products before making a major PC purchase. Further, even though Vista is prevalent in new PCs these days, true next-gen DirectX 10 Vista games haven't hit the market yet. So even after ATI's cards come out, we won't have the whole next-gen gaming story until we can test the games these cards have been designed to support. We hope to have a few DirectX 10 tests together by the fall at worst, but the entire industry will be only speculating until a fully-cooked DirectX 10 game emerges.

Our remaining comments about the X-Cube don't really vary from the last time we looked at one of Maingear's small-size PCs. The custom paint job (blue this time) extends from the chassis to the Saitek Eclipse II keyboard and the Logitech G5 Laser Mouse (first generation), and while it's undeniably attractive, it represents $300 of this system's overall price. A dual-layer DVD burner with LightScribe capability gives you as much standard-definition disc-burning and reading capability as you'd want. We wish Maingear had found a way to add a media card reader to this system, though; perhaps in the spare optical drive bay.

Other expansion options include a single PCI slot and an x1 PCI-Express slot. Among Maingear's options to fill these slots, you'll find a wireless networking adapter, a standard-definition TV tuner, a traditional modem, and one of four Creative Sound Blaster options (our review unit came with the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer card). It would have been nice if Maingear had found a motherboard with Wi-Fi built in, so as to not occupy a slot, not to mention having that capability included with all of its X-Cubes. Many lower-end small desktops have Wi-Fi included. It looks a little silly that Maingear's doesn't.

Finally, Maingear might be the last remaining vendor to offer three years of parts and labor coverage as the default warranty for this system. We can't speak to the cost that adds to the bottom line, but considering the expensive hardware, the extralong coverage doesn't seem to knock the X-Cube's price out of whack. Phone support runs from 9:00 a.m to 7:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Saturday. Online support is skimpier, with only a small FAQ, a free McAfee virus scanner, and a step-by-step guide outlining the system recovery process.

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System configurations:

ABS Ultimate X Striker Elite
Windows Vista Ultimate; 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800; 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drive

AVADirect Core 2 Duo SLI
Windows Vista Home Premium; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 overclocked to 2.63GHz; 2GB 1,066MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 640MB GeForce 8800 GTS (overclocked); 150GB Western Digital 10,000 rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drive; 500GB Western Digital 7,200 rpm hard drive

Dell XPS 710 H2C
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (overclocked to 3.2GHz); 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM; (2) 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (2) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0); 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive

Maingear X-Cube
Windows Vista Ultimate; 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800; 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 768MB GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card; 750GB Seagate 7,200 rpm hard drive

Polywell Poly i680 SLI
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (2) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0)