I’ve never been keen on the idea of abandoning my tower case for a system with all the gaming guts piggy-backing a monitor, but when the monitor in question is a 86cm curved ultra HD affair and the guts are full-sized and water-cooled I start feeling a bit swayed.
That’s Maingear’s newly-announced Alpha 34, an all-in-one gaming PC that doesn’t mess about when it comes to the question of future-proofing. Long-gone are the days when buying a monitor-contained system meant working with what you purchased until it all goes obsolete. Users can swap out their video card, upgrade their ram and replace their processor to their hearts’ content.
They probably won’t need to for quite some time though. The Alpha 34 comes standard with a combination of Intel 5960X processors, NVIDIA 980Ti, Titan X or AMD Radeon R9 390X graphics and 32GB of Kingston memory, which is basically everything you need at this moment, unless you’re keen on multiple graphics cards.
So it’s a powerful system with a monitor pumping out 3840 x 1440 resolution, all done quietly thanks to a closed-loop liquid cooling system. Oh, and it has an upgradeable webcam, in case you were worried about clipping a thing to the top.
Basically the only thing you’d wind up saddled with is the monitor, and if you’re going to be saddled with a monitor it might as well be a 86cm ultra HD curved monitor.
The Alpha 34 is available for customisation and purchase right now starting at $US1999 ($2740).
Comments
20 responses to “Suddenly An All-In-One Gaming PC Doesn’t Seem Like Such A Bad Idea”
*looks down* ‘Swayed’? Is that what they’re calling this, these days?
For that price it’s comparable to the majority of gaming laptops which you can’t upgrade easily.
If I had $3,000 plus AUSD to burn through on a computer I’d go for something like this (extra money aside for up front upgrades & gaming mouse/keyboard).
Are we doing monitors in metric now?
So the monitor runs the pc?
But has no disk drive?
Guess i have to download everything, lol.
people still use discs?
people still use tapes, believe it or not
I have a floppy drive at work….
Just people who can’t handle downloading 20 or more gb… and those that hate the usd value.
Not me but my couple of my friends do
I use discs for anything that’s going to be 20GB plus. I don’t mind paying extra to get it faster then downloading it.
Though I have a internet plan all to myself now, maybe it’s time to make the change.
I bought Fallout 4 on disc because it was cheaper, and I thought it would save me time on downloading.
It installed 5GB from the disc then had to download the other 20GB.
So unless they start releasing PC games on Blu Ray or include 5+ discs in the box, PC will eventually become download only for the big titles, it’s inevitable.
Yeah I wish it’d swap to blue ray. I bought a game at retail once. No disk just a steam code inside.
https://www.maingear.com/custom/desktops/alpha-34/index.php#prettyPhoto
lists optical bluray. Probably an option and a USB one since it says “external”
The disc drive on my desktop has only ever been used for blu-rays. In nearly 3 years. You can get a USB 3 drive if you REALLY need one. But with USB being faster than disc and most games being sold online, how many people need physical media?
I’m fairly certain that a 3440×1440 display is not Ultra HD.
you’re right, it’s Ultra-wide, but not ultra HD.
It’d need to be 5120×2160p in that aspect ratio (21:9) to be Ultra-wide Ultra HD
WQHD? or whatever, UHD is 3840×2160 or above.
Same promo tactics as Apple with iMacs – don’t show side view so people don’t see how thick it actually is.
That’s gonna be some insane temps in that enclosure. GPU fans perma 100%. North/southbridge overheats. Have fun.
Regardless of thickness, it’s still going to have a smaller footprint than a traditional desktop.
Installed water cooling is going to keep it cool enough and if the engineering is done right, some decent airflow is plenty for the video cards.
The installed water cooling is for CPU only. GPU puts out insane amounts of heat and I’m not quite sure where they’re getting the clear airflow from one side of GPU, and out the fan (hint: they’re not).
Not to mention, things like ram, capacitors, and north/southbridge heatsinks all require cooling too. This thing will fail in Australia.
Yeah, fair enough.