I've been reviewing and evaluating gaming PCs for several years. Each time I sit down to write a review like this, I ask myself one tough question: "Is this the machine that would convert me from building my own rigs to buying a custom, boutique system? The machine that gets everything right? Would I spend potentially thousands of dollars on this PC for my own personal use?" Thus far, the only system that warranted an enthusiastic "yes!" is Falcon Northwest's Tiki.
Until today.
Don't misunderstand me. The Tiki is still very much in contention. It simply got some unexpected company at the top.
I've spent the last couple months with the Maingear TORQ, a compact but beastly gaming rig that resembles what the PC offspring of a muscle car and a luxury automobile might look like. It's housed inside a Corsair Obsidian 250D chassis. Then it's given a professional splash of color with Glasurit paint, the same automative paint used on brands like
Come to think of it, the snow white coolant is an appropriate color choice, since this is the coolest running system I've ever reviewed. More on that in a second.
The Maingear TORQ: Who's It For?
An Intel/Nvidia equipped Torq like this (the "Super Stock" variant) has a baseline price of $3349. You'll need to add about $1100 to the price tag to outfit it with the specs my review sample had. Before you scoff, this is actually a reasonable price for a custom built system assembled by a boutique vendor. I mock-configured one of my beloved Tikis with equivalent hardware, and it came to $3400. Of course, the Tiki's GTX 980 is air cooled, not liquid cooled. There's no custom water loop. No reservoir and colored coolant, etc. No doubt about it, with the Torq you're paying for expertise, aesthetics, and careful assembly. Hell, I build high-powered gaming rigs all the time -- but would I trust myself with a liquid cooled monster like this? Nope, I'll pay for peace of mind and let the experts handle it.
Bottom line: It's distinguished as the world's first fully liquid cooled, small form factor PC. It's for ultra-enthusiasts who want to game at 1440p with absolutely no compromise, on a machine that's isn't a hulking tower. One that actually looks great on your desk. A machine that's beautiful, stays quiet, and requires very little maintenance.
Maingear TORQ (Super Stock) Tech Specs:
- Chassis: Corsair Obsidian 250D with window
- Paint job: Hunter Green (Glasurit automotive paint)
- Custom liquid cooling with Primochill Advance LRT flexible PVC tubing
- Heat exchanger array: 240 (2x 120mm) + 140mm copper core radiator with high airflow fans
- Reservoir: 5.25" Bay-mounted Koolance reservoir with pump
- Motherboard: Asus Z97i-Plus (4x Usb 3.0, 4x Usb 2.0, Enhanced Overclocking , Integrated Wireless AC)
- GPU: Liquid-cooled Nvidia GTX 980 4GB
- CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K 4.0GHz/4.4GHz Turbo 8MB L3 Cache
- Memory: 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3-2133 1.65V (2x8GB)
- Drive Bay 1: Dual 256GB Samsung 850 PRO SSDs in RAID 0
- Drive Bay 2: 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT 7200 RPM hard drive
- PSU: 860 Watt Corsair Professional Digital Series AX860 80+ Platinum Certified
If a percentage of the above terminology went over your head, don't fret. I'm fairly new to the world of liquid cooling myself, so I can't offer an exhaustive analysis concerning Maingear's choice of reservoir, coolant, pumps, or GPU water blocks. What I can do is explain why some of these parts are here, and the advantages to having them.
Why Liquid Cooling?
The advantages of liquid cooling are numerous. Liquid holds much more heat than metal, so it takes more energy to heat it up. A secondary advantage? The aesthetic. In configurations like this it looks beyond sexy.
With such a compact chassis, though, liquid cooling an overlocked CPU and a high-end graphics card while minimizing overall system noise is a challenge. This isn't the type of rig where you pinch pennies, so Maingear uses best in class water blocks to transfer as much heat away from those components as possible. This makes a massive difference with the graphics card. By stripping out the reference cooler and adding a water block, the GTX 980 doesn't exceed a balmy 54C under the most extreme load. Compare this to an air-cooled GTX 980, which hits about 79C. That's a difference of about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes a very perceptible difference to the user once that waste heat gets expelled. A space heater this isn't. In fact it's a system I'd fearlessly use during our oppressive 112F Las Vegas summers.
Anyway, the coolant takes that heat from the GPU and CPU and transfers the heat to the radiator, which then extracts that heat into the air. Maingear gave me some insight into their choice of radiator:
"For radiators you need to balance the thickness of the radiators without sacrificing the airflow by using ultra-thin fans. We went with a thick low-restriction 140mm radiator on the bottom since we had more room, but we went with a super-efficient 240 at the top. Despite that fact that it isn’t a thick radiator, the 240 has an incredibly high fin density, but with a thinner fin design that doesn’t restrict the air flow. We also made sure to tweak the flow speed of the loop as well, to make sure it was as efficient as possible (this will actually increase the performance the cooling loop substantially). You’ll also notice we have a clever quick disconnect set up on the TORQ. If you want to install an air cooled card, you simply need to disconnect the tubes, remove the GPU, and attach the loop back together and you are good to go. No need to drain the entire loop for a graphics card update. We also wanted to make maintenance easy, so we used a bay mounted reservoir for easy refilling, and so a customer can monitor the coolant level."
The Noise Factor
Liquid cooling often has another advantage in that the builder can dramatically reduce operating noise. Unsurprisingly then, the Maingear TORQ is one of the quietest systems to cross my desk. At a close distance -- let's say you're seated 2 feet away from your machine with it sitting on your desk -- you'll register about 30dB of noise even while gaming. That's the equivalent of a quiet whisper in a library. For better or worse, there are no jarring variations in noise, either. I say "worse" because its idle noise output is slightly higher than something like the Tiki. But distractingly so? Only if you're scared of whispers.
Gaming Benchmarks
As you guys know, when it comes to system reviews I'm taking a new approach to real-world benchmarking. My new method is to determine what in-game graphical quality settings yield at least 60fps at 1080p. But in this system's case we're cranking that requirement up to 1440p/60fps, not just because it has the horsepower, but because 1440p adoption is increasing. And I had the pleasure of testing this system with an Asus ROG Swift monitor. I'm a broken record here, but Nvidia's G-Sync makes such a dramatic difference to the overall gaming experience that I'd gladly sacrifice pixels to play on this G-Sync enabled 1440p monitor, over a non-G-Sync 4K monitor.
- Heaven 4.0 Benchmark: Extreme Settings | Average 66.3fps
- Shadow of Mordor: Ultra Quality | Minimum 50fps, Average 67fps
- Batman Arkham Origins: DX11 Features Enabled | Minimum 81fps, Average 123fps
- Tomb Raider: Ultimate Quality | Minimum 56fps, Average 71fps
- Metro Last Light Redux: Very High, Tessellation Normal, Adv. PhysX On | Minimum 21fps, Average 67fps
- Far Cry 4: Very High Quality | Minimum 61fps, Average 68fps
- BioShock Infinite: Ultimate Quality with DDOF on | Minimum 64fps, Average 84fps
- Alien Isolation: Ultra Quality | Minimum 8fps, Average 99fps
- Battlefield 4: Ultra Quality | Minimum 46fps, Average 61fps
- GRID Autosport: Ultra Quality with 8xMSAA | Minimum 90fps, Average 131fps
Far Cry 4 and Metro: Last Light Redux are key indicators that the Torq can handle the most demanding games at their highest settings while still delivering an average 60fps at 2560x1440 resolution. Bonus points for the system remaining cool and quiet in the process. And let's be honest, at this price it absolutely should do all of that.
I managed to obtain a decent, stable GPU overclock, resulting in about a 17% performance uplift.
I also managed to achieve a nice stable overclock, adding 265MHz to both the GPU and Memory clocks, resulting in approximately a 17% performance uplift across the majority of games tested.
A Note On Upgrading
Small form factor PCs are notoriously difficult to upgrade, mainly due to the creative but cramped placement of their components. The Torq simplifies this more than I expected. While I'd recommend outfitting it with a liquid-cooled GPU (oh how I'd love to see this system with a liquid-cooled Titan X inside) you don't plan to replace for awhile, the quick disconnect makes it fairly simple. And swapping out drives just requires unscrewing the left panel, moving cables out of the way, and accessing the hard drive bays.
Still, people buy systems like this not only for the performance, acoustics, and good looks, but also for the convenience. If I'm spending this kind of coin, I plan to equip it with parts that shouldn't need to be upgraded in the near future. At the very least, the TORQ has you covered with its Core i7 Devil's Canyon CPU, its 16GB of best-in-class RAM from Corsair, its blistering fast Samsung SSDs in RAID 0, and its 3TB of deep storage. And provided you're not planning to game at 4K, the GTX 980 should deliver gaming bliss for a good long while.
Before I forget to mention it, that pair of Samsung 850 Pros is blisteringly fast. I measured sequential read speeds of 1100MB/s and sequential write speeds of 930MB/s. Even random writes hit about 892MB/s. It's going to make Windows 8.1 super snappy, and drastically accelerate gaming load times with titles like Battlefield 4.
Closing Thoughts
Pure performance isn't the only thing I consider when evaluating my personal purchasing decisions. Nor aesthetics. Does the company have helpful tech support? Are they engaging with fans on
And if 4K is what you're looking for, Maingear can in fact put an Nvidia Titan X inside the Torq, complete with EK Supremacy liquid cooling. This elicits considerable drool.
I don't look at cost as a detriment when reviewing systems like this, because the target demographic is ultra enthusiasts who want a luxury piece of hardware. In my opinion, Maingear absolutely delivers that with a fair price, and a stunning overall package. Perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay Maingear is that I'd buy this system for my own private use, and that's a rare statement.
