Forget PS5 and Xbox Series X: This living room PC beats them both on power

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By Roland Moore-Colyer
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Maingear Turbo packs PS5 and Xbox Series X killing-power into a compact PC

Maingear Turbo PC
(Image credit: Maingear)

Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are shaping up to be impressive consoles, but they lack the flexibility of a gaming PC, which in turn tend to be a lot less compact than Sony or Microsoft’s machines. This is where Maingear comes in. 

The PC hardware firm has taken the covers off its new Turbo compact PC, a dinky desktop that comes packing AMD’s latest Ryzen 3000XT processors and the latest graphics cards. Maingear claims the desktop is so compact, it takes up as much space as a shoebox.

At a width of 6.7 inches and a depth of 14.4 inches, we can well believe it, though its 12.3-inch height means it’s certainly taller than the average shoebox. But given the system can support graphics cards up to Nivida’s mighty Titan RTX, the dimensions of the Turbo PC are pretty impressive. 

We could well imagine it sitting behind a TV or neatly to one side of an entertainment system, ready to deliver both current and next-generation gaming. And thanks to options for a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT CPU, AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT or one of Nvidia’s powerful GeForce RTX graphics cards, as well as up to 64GB of RAM and a frankly vast 16TB of storage space, Maingear’s compact computer has a spec that could trounce the next-generation consoles. 

Maingear Turbo compact PC

(Image credit: Maingear)

Fitting such a spec inside a small chassis has meant Miangear needed to use its Apex liquid cooling system and orientate the setup so that cool air is sucked in from the bottom of the machine and vented out the top, not unlike the Xbox Series X. Custom tubing and the use of a quiet pump ensures the water cooling system can keep powerful components from melting down while also ensuring that fan noise doesn’t become excessive. That seems handy if you plan to connect such a machine to a TV rather than pop it under a desk.

All this compact design doesn’t exactly come cheap, with a Turbo model that targets 1080p starting at $1,699; there’s a reason why gaming consoles are so popular compared to even the best gaming PCs. But for the price, you are getting a well-specced machine that’ll handle all current and near-future games, as well as handle intensive work tasks such as video rendering or CAD jobs. That's not something a PS5 can do.

Nvidia is poised to reveal the GeForce RTX 3080 and other next-generation graphics cards soon, and AMD is seemingly prepping a killer GPU for September. So the coming months are set to be just as interesting for PC gaming as they are for Xbox and PlayStation. 

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face. 

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3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • shimakatase03
    Is this just click bait or what let's forget the xbox and ps5 and let's pay 3x more for a pc that might hit 1080p. What kind of trash articles is this site promoting. Yeah if you dump enough money into something sure it can be better but if 1080p is all it can hit at $1,700 that's garbage. Trying to make it look like it useful for so many other things is pointless because unless you are just getting into video editing(or whatever) you already have equipment to do this so either this article is looking at the few people who need this kind of stuff or I feel more likely this company paid for this add in Hope's of getting a profit making this site untrustworthy and trash. Bottom line stay away from this site and anything that has something to do with them!
    Reply
  • thedirtybubble15
    @shimakatase03. I disagree. This article is pretty spot on and fair. You said it yourself you're paying more for something that is clearly better and that would outperform your console (That's how things usually go, you can either pay to sleep at a motel or pay a premium for a resort). If you only browse the web and play Fortnite sure why buy a pc when you can get a console? but if you're looking for a tool and an overall better gaming experience without compromising the things you can do with your system then the PC is an obvious choice. It's common for people to pay $2,000 for macs/surfaces so $1,700 is more than reasonable for a product that would outperform current generation macs and blow your dusty console off its shelf.
    Reply
  • shimakatase03
    I dont agree this article says that pc targets 1080p not that it targets 4k meaning that a xbox one x clearly outperforms it at a fraction of the cost and that's not considering that we have two vastly superior console's launching in mere months that will blow it out of the water if it's only targeting 1080p and at what can only be assumed a fraction of the cost as I'm sure nobody expects these new consoles to sell for anything over $600.
    Reply