While I think this Maingear HTPC looks good, and it’s certainly spec’ed well, I’m not sure I buy the idea of serious PC gaming in the living room. Gaming from your couch is about laying back with a controller and rocking the Halo-Kazooie or whatever it is the kids have these days. I know Phantom has been trying (ineffectively, for years now) to change that, but they’re not going to break into the market riding on the back of this $1800 (minimum) mega-HTPC.
A Core i7 on an X58 mobo, with dual 9800GTs and a ton of RAM means you could play just about anything using the included Phantom Lapboard, but it just doesn’t seem right yet. If you’re gaming, you want to do it on a low-latency monitor with a nice mouse like the X8 or Death Adder, and if you’re more into watching downloaded movies or streaming Netflix, an Xbox 360 or Popcorn Hour will do you just fine for a couple bills.
That said, people for whom money is less of an object should jump on this thing (if it isn’t loud as hell), because hey, why not?
Well, like we said in the press release – it’s a gaming PC that is meant to fit in your A/V rack. Nearly 100% of the A/V furniture out there won’t fit a full tower. We full towers too, though. And we’ve used the lapboard – it ROCKS. If you want to game in the living room using a mouse and keyboard, it’s the way to go. We sell cheaper HTPCs for those who don’t care about gaming, and we sell full towers for those who don’t care about HTPCs. This is just us filling yet another niche. ;)
Fair enough, fair enough. I’m glad to hear the lapboard is good, I had my doubts.
Thanks Devin and Chris. The Phantom Lapboard deserves to be paired with the MainGear’s custom computer products. We are very excited.
dual 9800Gt’s? Come on now….
That’s 224 total stream processors (more than a GTS 260) and every bit the graphical features of a GT200 processor. It’s just fine. Remember, these are low profile. As soon as more powerful solutions are available low-profile we will add them. Till then, if you need more power, I suggest our X-Cube. This product was designed to fill a niche, as stated.