In our last newsletter, we interviewed OriginPC about their winning entry into the 2018 Intel Extreme Rig Challenge, a competition between some of the most talented PC builders in the world to construct a custom machine that utilizes the ASUS ROG Strix* X299-XE Gaming motherboard with Intel® X299 chipset, Intel® Core™ i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor, and Intel® Optane™ SSD 900P Series at their fullest potential.
This time, we’re featuring Maingear, the winner of the Most Creative award and third place overall. Technical Marketing Director Ron Reed and Head of Product Development Sean Cadet gave us a rundown of how they designed and built the machine, the details on their impressive cooling system, and some advice for PC gamers who are itching to start building their own DIY elite machines.
Maingear won Most Creative at this year’s Intel Extreme Rig Challenge with good reason. Their machine showcases one of the most unlikely hardware crossovers ever seen in entries to the competition: A PC that comes with a fully functional custom dock for the Nintendo Switch. Complete with a thoughtful, Nintendo-inspired color palette and accompanying decals, Maingear’s custom F131 is a wonderful sight for PC lovers and Nintendo fans alike.
And the thing is, that’s not the only impressive feat that Maingear managed to pull off during their work on the PC. From just looking at the case, the liquid cooling tubes immediately draw the eye, pulsing with pleasing, vibrant colors. “We were able to engineer the world's first RGB-addressable controlled liquid cooling system with integrated lighting in the water cooling itself,” Reed said.
Maingear considered it such a remarkable accomplishment that they plan on including the feature in future product releases. “It's really incredible that we were able to manufacture something that will become a future product and create something that the industry has never seen before,” Reed said.
The cooling system was especially important to engineer correctly because of the demands set by the high-end components Intel had provided to the Maingear team for the competition. “Something we needed to consider was how to cool an 18-core processor, overclock it, and keep the system quiet — we didn't want to sacrifice the acoustics that we would have on a normal production system,” Reed explained. “That is where our APEX cooling technology really came into play.”
The APEX cooling system is one of Maingear’s crowning achievements as a custom PC shop. “APEX is what we call an integrated cooling system, and it's essentially a multi-featured water cooling product,” Reed said. “It includes two liquid cooling pumps which provide redundancy in the case of failure, and also allow the pumps to operate at a fraction of their maximum speed in order to reduce noise and increase longevity.”
The APEX cooling system also includes a flow meter that allows users to monitor the speed of the coolant loop, as well as a quick drain system that can release all the coolant from the loop in a matter of seconds. It’s a system that allows both the CPU and GPU to be independently cooled without the risk of hot coolant affecting any of the machine’s components. “It's all of our secret sauce,” Reed said. “It allows us to put all this technology in a slim case and have it be a robust solution that will be reliable for years to come.”
When it comes to learning on your own, Reed and Cadet both had words of wisdom to impart on PC builder who is only getting started. “Never be afraid to be wrong,” Cadet said. “As long as you're careful with what you do there's no real harm in making mistakes.”
As far as educating yourself with online resources, Maingear suggested you check out what they have to offer. “We actually take a lot of pride in education that we do,” Reed said. “For customers, we actually will do Twitch streams where we stream our builds and explain what we're doing. We love our community so much, and we share our thought processes with people.”
Maingear’s Build Process
Learn more about Maingear's F131 Gaming PC here.