Maingear MG-1 Silver gaming PC review

Our Verdict

This gaming PC delivers a solid spec and great 1080p gaming performance, thanks to its RTX 4060 GPU. Add in a tidy build and some great-looking lighting, and this is a great gaming rig for its modest asking price.

Reasons to buy

• Fantastic 1080 gaming performance
• RGB front panel looks great
• Decent build quality

Reasons to avoid

• Only 512GB of storage space
• Basic motherboard and PSU

Maingear is a US custom PC builder run by hardware enthusiasts, and it shows in the company’s meticulously crafted gaming PC builds. From its tidy cable management to its use of custom-made, 3D-printed parts, Maingear knows how to catch your eye. The Maingear MG-1 Silver gaming PC is no exception, with an impressive specs sheet for its $1,249 price tag, as well as some mighty fine lighting.

Maingear is no stranger to our best gaming PC guide either, with its Apex Rush wowing us with its custom water-cooling system. This rig is a very different beast, though, with a very tempting price that buys you a great Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU for gaming, as well as a 10-core Intel CPU.

Maingear MG-1 Silver design

The Maingear MG-1 Silver is a great example of boutique PC building done well. It’s practical, yet it also looks the part, bringing RGB lighting to the forefront of its design, despite its low price. The black metal and rubber case looks flashy, but it’s not over the top with pointy angles – this simple, minimalist aesthetic will seamlessly fit into various setups, from home offices to gaming environments.

The vulcanized rubber front frame is a standout feature of the MG-1 Silver’s design. This material choice is unconventional in PC cases, yet it offers a tactile, durable surface that screams “premium”. This structure at the front is designed to hold customizable RGB panels, which you can personalize to your liking. A quick visit to Maingear’s website will allow users to customize their own builds and front plates in real-time, thanks to Maingear’s on-site 3D rendering software.

Attached magnetically, these panels allow for easy customization and enable users to tailor the look of their PC to their personal style. The magnetic attachment is easy to use, and ensures a secure and seamless fit, maintaining the sleek lines of the PC’s design. The RGB lighting within these panels is also fully customizable, offering a spectrum of colors and lighting effects thanks to the onboard software and included RGB remote. This feature enables you to create a dynamic, visually striking look that can be changed at any time.

The tempered glass side panel is a welcome (if not unusual) addition here as well, enabling you to view the internal components and the neatly organized cables. There’s plenty of room to upgrade the Maingear MG-1 Silver in the future as well, thanks to its spare PCIe slots, as well as room for an AIO cooler in the roof. 

Maingear MG-1 Silver features

The Maingear MG-1 Silver is going for the jugular of the lower mid-range gaming PC market, providing a roster of solid components without a bloated price tag. The heart of this system is its Intel Core i5-13400F processor, which gives you six of Intel’s Raptor Lake P-Cores and, unlike the previous Core i5-12400F, also gives you four E-Cores.

These ten cores give it an extra edge in multi-tasking (that’s good if you do a lot of video encoding, for example), while its six P-Cores can boost to up to 4.6GHz. That’s not as high as the clock speed of the latest, more expensive, 14th-gen CPUs, such as the new 5.3GHz Core i5 14600K, but it’s perfectly fine for gaming.

The CPU is complemented by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, which offers a decent balance of rasterization and ray tracing performance in the latest games. Not only that, but it also supports Nvidia’s latest DLSS 3 Frame Generation tech, which uses AI to create extra frames in games, and smooth out the frame rate.

Meanwhile, cooling is managed by Cooler Master Hyper 212 air cooler, which is perfectly fine for the Core i5-13400F CPU, and it’s held in place with a custom, 3D-printed Maingear bracket.

The MG-1 Silver also rocks 16GB of Kingston Fury RGB DDR4 RAM running at 3,600MHz, which is a fine speed for DDR4 memory, and 16GB is all you need to run the latest games. Despite what you might think, DDR4 is still great for gaming. Of course, including RGB lighting on the RAM modules also adds an extra visual appeal.

The only real downside of the MG-1 Silver is the SSD capacity. The Solidigm P41 M.2 NVMe SSD performs well, but its 512GB capacity lacks the wiggle room to contain more than a handful of games (or just Baldur’s Gate 3.) Joking aside, its sequential 3,500MB/s read, and 1,625MB/s write speeds are perfectly fine for this price.

There are certainly faster and bigger M.2 drives that you could install in this PC at a later date. The MSI Pro B660M-A CEC WiFi DDR4 motherboard is pretty basic, being only a micro-ATX Model, but it does have a pair of 4x PCIe 4 M.2 connectors, meaning you could upgrade to something faster like the WD Black SN850X later down the line.

The whole lot is powered by a 600W EVGA PSU, which is pretty basic but provides ample power to the system, with some headroom for future upgrades as well. The MG-1 Silver is well-equipped when it comes to connections as well. The USB-C port on the front panel supports the USB 3.1 Gen 2 standard, which isn’t as quick as the fastest Gen 2×2 standard, but does support speedy 10Gbps data transfers.

There are also loads of standard USB 3.1 ports on the motherboard for your gaming mouse, keyboard, and external storage. The graphics card’s HDMI and DisplayPort outputs cater to various display options as well, from high-refresh-rate gaming monitors to immersive VR setups. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 ensure the system is ready for the latest wireless standards as well.

Maingear MG-1 Silver specs

Maingear MG-1 Silver performance

The Maingear MG-1 Silver’s performance is rooted in its carefully selected hardware, which is optimized for gaming efficiency and reliability. The Intel Core i5-13400F processor delivers solid multitasking performance for the price, while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 is solid for gaming at 1080p.

In the 3DMark CPU profile test, the Maingear MG-1 Silver clocked up a score of 7,330 with all 16 of its threads enabled, which is a decent result for a budget processor. By comparison, its six-core predecessor, the Core i5-12400F, only scores around 6,000 in this test, so you’re getting some extra multi-threading power from those four E-Cores.

On to games, and enabling DLSS Super Resolution, as well as DLSS 3 Frame Generation, allowed the MG-1 Silver to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1,920 x 1,080 at over 90fps on its Ultra ray tracing preset – a massive boost from around 35fps with DLSS deactivated.

Meanwhile, F1 23 happily averaged 80fps at the Ultra High detail preset, and Warhammer: Total War averaged 82fps. You’ll have no trouble running the latest games at 1,920 x 1,080 on this machine, even with ray tracing enabled if the game supports DLSS.

One highlight of this build is also its quiet operation in comparison to other gaming PCs I’ve tested – you can barely hear the fans, even when you’re gaming.

Maingear MG-1 Silver software

Coming hot off the runway with Windows 11 pre-installed and zero bloatware, the Maingear MG-1 Silver makes a great first impression when you fire it up. The absence of the unnecessary software that’s usually pre-installed by manufacturers is a significant advantage, allowing for a cleaner, more efficient initial setup. With no unnecessary programs pre-installed, players can begin using their PC almost immediately after unboxing. 

Maingear MG-1 Silver conclusion

The Maingear MG-1 Silver not only has dazzling good looks for its modest $1,249 price tag, but it also delivers the goods when it comes to gaming performance, even with ray tracing enabled. The RTX 4060 is a formidable GPU for 1080p gaming, and the Core i5-13400F is a decent CPU for its price, providing all the processing power you need for gaming.

If you don’t have an enormous amount of money to spend, but you want a great-looking PC and decent 1080p gaming performance, the Maingear MG-1 Silver is a fantastic option, especially with the ability to customize the front panel.