Review: Maingear's Shift Super Stock Z87 is an exercise in PC gaming decadence

Maingear Shift Super Stock Z87 $8,000.00 This incredibly expensive performance desktop packs premium components and water-cools them to deliver benchmark-destroying performance while remaining whisper quiet.

Booting up Maingear’s Shift Super Stock Z87 was a bit of a letdown. Given its $8000 price tag, I expected this high-performance hot rod to greet me with the throaty rumble of a precision-tuned sports car. But it didn’t make a sound because each of its ultra-premium components is water-cooled and whisper quiet.

At the top of the component list is Intel’s Core i7-4770K CPU—the pinnacle of the chip company’s brand-new Haswell family—and it’s overclocked to an insane 4.7GHz. You’ll also find three (yes, three) video cards based on Nvidia’s best GPU, the GeForce GTX Titan, each with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. There’s also 16GB of DDR3/2400 system memory, and not one, not two, but four of the best 256GB SSD we’ve tested—Samsung’s 840 Pro—configured as RAID 0 for blistering speed.

ROBERT CARDINThe Maingear Shift Super Stock Z87 is a mean, green gaming machine.

It’s a stupefying level of computing power, one that sets the bar for what an elite gaming PC should be. And this machine’s very existence demonstrates the enduring strength and appeal of the PC gaming market. Indeed, high-end gaming PCs like the Shift Z87 continue to sell well despite a precipitous drop in overall PC sales, and it’s not crazy to suggest that as more people abandon budget PCs and laptops in favor of tablets, premium hardware like the Shift will keep the PC gaming market afloat.

The Maingear Shift Super Stock Z87 turned in an exceptional Desktop WorldBench 8.1 score.

The Shift Z87’s Desktop WorldBench 8.1 score of 435 means it’s more than four times faster than our reference system, the modest Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13 . In fact, it’s the fastest desktop PC we’ve ever encountered. While that overall score is only modestly higher than the 421 that MicroFlex’s significantly cheaper MicroExpress 47B earned, the Shift Z87 blew the competition out of the water when we benchmarked it playing the latest games at very high resolution.

The MicroExpress 47B, for example, couldn’t deliver a playable frame rate with BioShock when we set the game’s resolution to 2560 by 1600 pixels and its visual quality to Ultra. That’s because the 47B is equipped with just one GeForce GTX 680 video card. The Shift Z87’s three Titan cards enabled it to play the game at that resolution at a mind-blowing 135 frames per second.

ROBERT CARDINLiquid cooling and a unique vertically oriented case enabled Maingear to significantly overclock the system.

As impressive as that is, the madness doesn’t stop there: The PCWorld lab team hooked the Shift Z87 up to three HD monitors and played Crysis 3 at a resolution of 5760 by 1440 pixels, all while achieving a consistent frame rate of 28 fps. That’s impressive performance, but more importantly it proves that all this power can afford you a real competitive advantage when playing games that challenge your situational awareness. Excelling during a Crysis 3 or Call of Duty deathmatch is easier when you can see everything in a 270-degree radius without moving your head.

High-resolution gaming is certainly no obstacle, as the Maingear Shift’s BioShock performance indicates.

But you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate the Shift Z87’s exceptional performance. This machine also placed first in nearly every one of the productivity-oriented benchmarks that make up the WorldBench 8.1 suite, including PCMark 7 Productivity and each of the media editing and encoding tests we run.

The Shift Z87’s signature chassis orients the motherboard 90 degrees to the right so that the ports and fans that are normally on the back of the PC are located on top. This leaves heat-generating components, such as the video cards, hanging from their brackets. This vertical orientation reduces the stress that the very heavy Titan cards place on the PCIe slots, but Maingear also wisely mounted a bracket on each card for even more support. And because hot air rises, vertical channels between the cards keep the video cards cooler than they would be if they were mounted in a more conventional stacked configuration.

ROBERT CARDINOn most computers, this shot would be of the rear panel. On the Maingear Shift, it’s a top-down view.

This design is complemented by a proprietary, open-loop, liquid-cooling system that chills not just the CPU but also the motherboard’s voltage regulators to allow for higher overclocking. This also enables the system to run extremely quietly—I rarely heard the fans spin up to to full speed, even while gaming. You can gaze at all this hardware—helpfully illuminated by an internal white-LED light bar—through a clear side panel on the chassis. And that leads to one of my few complaints: The latch on that panel doesn’t easily disengage. I had to gently wrestle with it whenever I wanted to poke around inside.

This machine can also deliver top-drawer performance with media editing and encoding chores.

The Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 motherboard at the heart of this beast delivers pretty much every connection option your heart could desire: a PS/2 jack, two USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, and a pair of gigabit ethernet jacks. And each video card has HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI outputs. And there’s a full complement of audio input and output connectors for microphones, headsets, and speakers. A slick recessed panel near the front of the Shift’s topside pops up to reveal a a memory card reader, another pair of audio in/out jacks, two more USB 3.0 ports, and a mini-DVI port.

Most of us aren’t in a position to drop eight grand on a computer, no matter how powerful it might be. But the Maingear Shift Z87 sits at the apex of personal computing, and it’s always fun to lay hands on a super-powerful, lovingly crafted PC such as this—even if you’d have to be a high-rolling, Lamborghini-driving, trust-fund baby to afford one.

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Stock And Run Your Own 8-Bit Street Cart In Cart Life

Some computer games put you behind the wheel of a powerful, expensive car. Others put you in the shoes of a swashbuckling pirate, or a brave knight. But how many games put you in the shoes of a recently divorced mother trying to make ends meet and win custody over her daughter, or a recent immigrant with broken English trying to find his way in a new life? Cart Life Freeware Edition is one game that does.

In Cart Life, as in real life, making a cup of coffee for a customer can be a complicated and frustrating experience.Looks can be deceiving, and Cart Life's retro-cute 8-bit appearance belies its serious, sometimes frustrating nature. The game's free edition lets you play either as Mel, a single mother trying to set up a new coffee cart, or Andrus, a recent immigrant trying to run a newspaper stand. The $5 Everything version adds a bagel vendor named Vinny, among other goodies; the $30 Delux-O version promises yet more, but is sold out as of this writing. Developer Richard Hofmeier's site shows an edition comparison chart.

Both Andrus and Mel are like real people: They get tired and hungry, and can't go on working unless they eat or sleep. When Mel gets hungry, she starts getting headaches. Each of them has someone else with needs to tend, too; Mel has an 11-year-old daughter, and Andrus has a cat.

Stocking newspapers every morning is a tedious, repetitive task involving lots of accurate typing.Mel starts the game with a watch, so she know what time of day it is (and so do you). Andrus lacks even this minor luxury, and can only tell you if it's light outside when you wake up. To move around the map, you can either travel by foot, by bus, or by taxi. Bus transport is cheap, but if it gets too late at night, the buses stop running and you must either walk home (exhausting) or get a taxi (expensive). At the end of each day, you see the character in the shower—fully nude, but in 8-bit style—on the left side of the screen, and a balance sheet showing how it's doing financially on the right side of the screen.

Selling newspapers or coffee for a living can be tedious, and Cart Life reflects this well. Andrus must unwrap a bundle of newspapers every morning to stock his stand. This isn't a single command: It's a repetitive process that takes about a minute, during which you must both use the mouse and repeatedly type the same few simple sentences without making any mistakes. If you make a mistake, Andrus drops a newspaper into a puddle of water.

Cart Life takes place in a fictional town called Georgetown, which you navigate using a simple map.Mel's stand is no simpler to operate. To set it up, you must first buy a permit. This is a frustrating process because the court clerk will only see you when you come when your exact number is up, and it is easy to miss. Once you get a permit, you need to buy a coffee machine, and only then you can get a stand. All of these items are expensive, and you will soon find yourself in debt which you must recoup by selling lots of drinks for just a few dollars each.

Once you're finally running your Cart Life stand, filling orders is often complicated. If you're lucky, customers order plain coffee, so you just need to pick the item they ordered and then type a simple phrase. But if they want more complicated Espresso-based drinks, you must go through a repetitive series of steps including grinding the coffee, filling the portafilter, sweeping the excess, tamping the coffee and so on. Each step has its own keystrokes, and you can't just mash buttons: If you overdo a step, you must start again from the top, and the customer may lose their patience and leave. If you do well, you may get a tip.

In Cart Life, you get tired and hungry, just like in real life.You set the price for each item in your stand, and this is a science in itself: Price things too cheaply and you don't make enough profit, but if you price expensively, customers will vocally refuse to buy your wares.

Cart Life's user interface is brilliant. The game intentionally makes you switch between the mouse and keyboard in an annoying way, so there's a learning curve. You can only save the game when you wake up every morning, so if you just quit midday, you will lose your progress for that day. Hofmeier doesn't set out to make Cart Life a fun game: It is equal parts stressful, sad, and touching, and those are all good reasons to play it. To me, it feels closer to an art project than a regular game. Highly recommended.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software. Some scenes in Cart Life feature stylized male or female nudity, in a non-sexual context.

—Erez Zukerman

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Maingear Shift Super Stock: King of the Hill

I try to steer clear of hyperbole. The fanciest gaming rigs are still mere machines, and I know enough about the underlying hardware to avoid being blown away by bars on a chart or tubes in a chassis.

But, wow. It's so blue (sorry, "Fusion Blue")! And that $300 paint job is just the tip of the iceberg. What the Shift Super Stock lacks in humility or frugality ($7967, as configured) it amply recoups in performance, versatility, and style.

The PCs that grace our Performance desktop PCs chart tend to focus on utterly demolishing demanding tasks (generally, games) as efficiently as possible. Most of the boutique vendors whose models grace our charts rely on off-the-shelf parts, which translates into a deemphasis of aesthetics. As a result, the chart is densely populated with drab black boxes. But a few vendors--Maingear among them--do things differently.

Maingear's Shift chassis is a recurring guest at or near the top of our charts. It's Maingear's own design, created in partnership with Silverstone. You'll be hard pressed to find anything like it on the market; the closest analog may be the Silverstone Raven RV01.

The big Shift chassis leaves plenty of room for large motherboards, triple SLI or Crossfire configurations, and liquid cooling--all standard fare for the category. But the Shift difference lies in design underlying its name: The machine's innards are tilted 90 degrees, so that the "rear" faces the top. It's simple really: heat rises. So the chassis packs large, slow-moving fans that pull cool air from the underside of the case, pushing warm air up and out the top. The components inside dissipate heat a bit more efficiently, slightly increasing their longevity and allowing you to dial the fans down a tad, to keep sound levels in check.

The model I reviewed included a window on the side and a white LED strip inside, so you can see the hardware in action. Getting into the chassis couldn't be easier: Just push a latch, and the case walls pop right off. Cable management is immaculate, too. The cables are routed through grommets into a chamber on the opposite side of the motherboard, leaving the main cavity of the PC readily accessible should you need to make changes inside. Though the hard drive bays offer tool-free access, you'll have to break out a screwdriver to get at the graphics boards.

Components include the requisite Intel Core i7-3960X processor, clocked at 4.8GHz and liquid cooled; 16GB of RAM, consisting of four 4GB sticks; three Radeon HD 7970 graphics boards are arrayed in triple-Crossfire;e four 120GB solid-state drives, arrayed in two RAID 0 pairs; a hefty 3TB platter drive to handle general storage; and a Blu-ray burner. There are no free PCI slots, as a hardware RAID controller is sandwiched alongside the graphics cards, but one hard drive bay remains open. Though the Shift's hard drive bays aren't hot-swappable, they are hosted in tool-free, readily accessible bays; pull on a latch, and they'll slide right out on their trays.

Performance is quite impressive, as you'd expect. On our WorldBench 7 benchmark test suite, the Shift Super Stock earned a score of 205. On our graphics tests, the Shift managed a frame rate of 95.4 frames per second on Crysis 2, at a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels, at high quality settings. At the maximum settings, it delivered 80.2 frames per second. Anything over 60 frames per second gives assurance of a smooth gaming experience, so the Shift Super Stock will be capably handling high-end PC games for years to come--as it should, given the price.

The Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard offers plenty of ports: six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, surround analog audio outputs, an SPDIF optical output port, one eSATA port, gigabit ethernet, Bluetooth, a PS/2 serial keyboard and mouse port, and a clear CMOS button for getting out of sticky situations if your overclocking experiments go haywire. The Shift's design is especially handy here; since all the ports and connectors are up on the top, they're very easy to access (as long as you keep the machine on the floor--which I'd recommend, since it weighs 70 pounds).

A grille covers the ports, but its purpose has always been something of a mystery to me. When it's in place, you can route cables through a channel on the top, which gives the Shift a clean, clutter-free look. But then USB keys and the like won't fit. The grille is held in place with screws and is easy to remove, but I've never seen much sense in keeping it around.

Closer to the front of the box you'll find a break-out panel that pops up to reveal a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, microphone and headphone jacks, and a multiformat card reader. The upfront placement of these connections is useful, but they feel a bit dated--I would love to have seen USB 3.0 front and center. The panel didn't pop up all the way, either, so I had to nudge it a bit to get full clearance for USB keys and the like. Not a big deal.

The Shift Super Stock arrived with Windows 7 Professional installed, but it's bloatware-free. Two shortcuts on the desktop provide links to free Office and antivirus software, but you can delete those if you've rather stick to your own wares.

I have to take a second to call out the Shift's binder-based information packet. Housed in a simple plastic case, it packs quite a bit of stuff: a complimentary Maingear t-shirt, the installation DVD for Windows, software for the Blu-ray burner, and codes for some games. Then there's the documentation proper--a generic guide highlighting the features of all of Maingear's product lines, plus the Maingear manifesto. The highlight is the 55-point "Pit Crew Log" that guides you through every stage of the qualification process, including benchmark results, the bios and driver versions installed on the machine when it shipped, and the signature of the Maingear employee who built your PC.

Plenty of PCs work their way through PCWorld Labs, and it's tricky for one to stand out--especially among Performance desktops, which use very similar components, are overclocked to comparable levels, and earn comparable scores. But the Shift Super Stock ticks all of the requisite boxes for power, intimidating size, and daunting price tag, but then it goes beyond, with a singular chassis that couples accessibility and intelligent thermal management. And further still, with concise documentation that provides a timeline of the Shift's birth and brings up some measure of accountability if something goes wrong. I'm not exactly a fan of blue (I'd prefer dark green, or maybe subtle gray), but the automotive finish is stunningly well done; you also have the option of choosing a custom color in the configurator.

I can't honestly recommend that anyone go out and spend $8000 on a PC. If you know that you need this much performance to tackle your tasks, however, and you have gobs of cash to throw at your hardware, you'll be happy to know that the Shift Super Stock's build quality is superb, and that Maingear offers plenty of customization options.

Since I'm a bit of a miser, when I tackle these expensive performance behemoths I usually look into what it would take to build the machine myself. If I can save a few hundred bucks (or more) by investing a day or two of tinkering--which I enjoy--why should I involve a middleman?

The Shift Super Stock is as compelling a response as I need.

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U.S. Charges Latvian Hacker in $2 Million Stock Scam

A Latvian man has been charged by the U.S. financial regulator for an alleged online stock fraud that cost investors more than $2million (£1.3 million), and may have enabled him to profit over half a million pounds.

The SEC accuses Igor Nagaicevs, 34, of hacking the accounts of electronic broker-dealer firms and illicitly trading stocks through them as part of a "brazen stock price manipulation scheme."

The regulator alleges the Latvian hacked into the accounts and made unauthorized trades of securities 159 times between 2009 and August 2010, racking up total profits of $874,896 (£557,000) through an operation it says enabled him to "consistently derive quick trading profits" even when prices were only slightly manipulated.

As a result of his activity the prices of over a hundred NYSE and Nasdaq-listed stocks were affected and investors lost large amounts of money.

The SEC complaint, lodged in federal court in San Francisco, claims that Nagaicevs's scheme followed the same pattern on each occasion. This started by establishing a long or short position in a traded security through unregistered brokerage firms, who provided him with anonymous and direct access to the US securities market.

He then hacked into the online accounts of other broker-dealer companies, using their client investors' cash to make unauthorized trades of stocks and securities in order to manipulate market prices. This left him in a position to reap huge gains - in effect by buying back or selling the same stocks at artificial prices, thereby realizing a profit on transactions.

In one such incident it is alleged Nagaicevs generated profits of $14,000 in just 32 minutes by driving up the stock price of a NYSE-listed company before liquidating his position. The losses of all investors who fell prey to his scheme were reimbursed by the broker-dealer firms they held accounts with.

The SEC charge sheet did not however detail exactly how Nagaicevs gained access to the compromised accounts. FINRA, the self-regulatory body for broker-dealers in the U.S., has since warned investors to be viligant of email hack attacks that can lead to theft from investor accounts.

Also facing charges are the four brokerage firms that gave Nagaicevs access to the markets, which the SEC says consequently lent a veneer of legitimacy to his transactions. These are Alchemy Ventures, KM Capital Management, Mercury Capital and Zanshin Enterprises, which are accused of flouting federal rules that require brokerage firms to be registered and of breaching the requirement to gather information on customers and their trading.

Mercury and Zanshin have settled the charges, but Alchemy and KM Capital are understood to be contesting them.

Nagaicevs is charged with obtaining money fraudulently under the Securities Act, and the SEC is seeking restitution plus interest for victims and a civil penalty. Nagaicevs is yet to comment.

The news comes days after a settlement reached by U.S. hedge fund Diamondback Capital in a separate case. Diamondback is paying $9 million to settle groundbreaking charges around the participation of two former employees in the $62 million (£40 million) insider trading of Dell and Nvidia stock.

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