Maingear North Series Gaming PCs Get A Bigger Case For Beefy GPUs, Better Cooling
Maingear, a builder of boutique PCs for gaming and content creation (and anything else, really), is rolling out a refresh of its North series desktops. Normally this type of thing would coincide with a new line of CPUs or GPUs from AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA. In this case, however, Maingear's refresh is based on Fractal Design's new and bigger North XL chassis.
As the name implies, the North XL is a bigger version of the popular North chassis. It features the same stylish design language with wooden slats adorning the front, a tempered glass side panel, and brass trim on the front I/O ports. However, the XL version is roomier to better accommodate today's bulky graphics cards, and to facilitate more cooling options.
"The new North Series represents a significant evolution in Maingear's lineup, featuring the brand-new Fractal North XL Chassis. This larger chassis offers increased compatibility with larger GPUs, providing Maingear greater flexibility to equip systems with the latest NVIDIA RTX 40-series GPUs for an unparalleled gaming experience while providing Maingear North XL series customers greater flexibility for upgrades down the road," Maingear says.
On the cooling side, Maingear says the bigger case enables it to install a 280mm or 360mm liquid cooling system at the top of the chassis in an exhaust configuration, "as well as offering future compatibility for 420mm cooling systems in the front of the chassis."
Maingear is offering seven pre-configured tiers including Silver ($1,399), Gold ($1,499), Platinum ($1,949), Ruby ($2,199), Diamond ($2,649), Legendary ($3,149), and Ultimate ($4,199). Each config above Sliver comes with a 'Boost' option, which doubles the RAM and storage for an added fee.
The least expensive config—Silver—comes with an Intel Core i5-14400F processor (10C/16T), Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black air cooler, MSI Pro B660M-A WiFi motherboard, GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB GDDR6) graphics card, 16GB of DDR4-3600 RAM with RGB lighting, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 650W power supply, and various other odds and ends.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Ultimate setup goes mostly all out with an Intel Core i9-14900K processor, Maingear Epic 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler, ASRock Phantom Gaming Z790 Nova motherboard, GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB GDDR6X) graphics card, 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM with RGB lighting, 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a 1200W power supply. The Boost option is $350 extra, which gets you 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD.
Maingear is also employing NVIDIA's recently-introduced GeForce RTX 40 Super series GPUs, and namely on the Ruby (GeForce RTX 4070 Super), Diamond (GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super), and Legendary (GeForce RTX 4080 Super) config.
For anyone interested, the refreshed Maingear North lineup with the bigger chassis is now available.
