Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for your wallet, the Alpha 34 presents an outrageous set of configuration options, including but not limited to 8-core Extreme Edition and 18-core Xeon Intel CPUs, as well as Nvidia’s Titan X or 980Ti graphics cards or, for AMD loyalists, a Radeon R9 390X. Additional specs include 32GB of Kingston DDR4 RAM, and a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVME SSD, purportedly with a 2.5Gbps read speed.
Maingear’s Alpha 34 isn’t like other all-in-ones. Rather than shipping with soldered-in, irreplaceable mobile chips, it’s completely modular, like any other gaming PC. It allows for the installation of any full-size GPU, and in the chassis, a closed loop liquid cooling system can be found.
While the Alpha 34 looks to be a promising setup for gaming, Maingear is presenting its all-in-one PC as an entertainment center rather than your go-to Steam apparatus. Unfortunately, most TV shows are formatted for 16:9 displays, and the Alpha 34’s ultra wide format exhibits a 21:9 aspect ratio, which means standard widescreen movies will play with large black bars on either side of the video.
For $1,999, Maingear’s Alpha 34 isn’t totally unreasonable. That is, until you find out what the base model actually comes with. For that price, you can expect a Core i3 processor, a 1TB 7200rpm hard drive, and an AMD R7 360X. And that’s without a mouse, keyboard, webcam, and wireless networking included.
If you want the aforementioned Titan X with a liquid-cooled eight-core gaming PC and 1TB SSD, you’re looking at a rig priced upwards of $4,771. What’s more, you can get an Alpha 34 with an 18-core Xeon processor, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia Quadro K620 for the modest price of $7,704.
It comes suited in a black finish, but if you’re not a fan of the gritty gaming PC look, Maingear is willing to ship the Alpha 34 in a number of alternative colors — for yet an additional cost of $299 to $399.
