Maingear has unveiled the SHIFT desktop PC, which is aimed at the high-end enthusiast market. Referring to the SHIFT as an "everyday supercomputer," the company says it will "reshape the current landscape of high performance computing" -- a bold claim if I ever saw one.

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LOL...19 grand? I'll buy two. ;)

Yeah, if anyone is willing to spend 19 grand on a computer more power too them.

Personally I'd rather buy a car.

Mm... once again i would love to have this to replace my freakin 5 year old desktop :D . But seriously 19 grand ? I can't make up my mind if thats good or bad ,both have pluses . ;)

I have to say the top side placement of all the wires would be weird. and in some situations difficult. I myself have the tower in a small cubie in my desk. Big 120 intake on the front, 140 in the back. I could see this style case just not being suitable for some folks (but that is probably the case with anything)

As far as components, for the base $2.2k, this system is quite pricey. A Geforce 250 (512mb GDDR3), quad core 2.8GHz, 750GB HDD WD Caviar, Win7 Home Premium 64-bit, 4gb Kingston Hyper X ram, and a 750W PSU. No monitor, keyboard, mouse, or other peripherals, just the tower.

Would most people after a high end PC likely purchase all the components and build anyhow? I would.

I don't see the deal in here, way expensive to what you can arm by yourself with some pretty equal configuration.

Holy pocketbook busters Batman! That thing looks so sweet, but what a price, but I would have to get the X58 configuration. I know I could use this thing to run my Mythtv setup would it be quiet enough for the den? Then again, it does have large fans is liquid cooled and has the fastest processor on the planet.

I would have to dual boot it with Linux to have the proper install of XBMC, Boxee and Hulu desktop and would put a BenQ MP512ST short throw projector on it for a great high-def display. Throw in a wireless pad, a couple of nun-chucks, a bluetooth chip and just think of what kind of awesome games this would play!!

Let me rephrase, this computer as a high end it indeed looks like something sweet, to say it will reshape... I mean... they just putted together the best there is out there (of course...) but, how will they reshape the extreme-user high end-enthusiast market? What's new in here? A unique cooling system that will allow to uber-clock the computer as is?

I repeat, it is indeed an awesome piece of hardware atop another awesome piece of hardware, but how it reshapes things?

But for someone who already has a nice car, why not? :-) If you have the money...

I haven't crunched the numbers, the but they are obviously charging tons of money for the convenience of having this put together for you. For example. The i7 975 is $990 MORE expensive than the i7 925, when in reality, the 975 can be had for about the same price as the difference. That means there is a $250-$300 or so markup on just the CPU if you opt in for the highest performing one.

That's quite a premium to pay for the "convenience" of not having to put it together yourself or paying someone else far less to do it for you.

So for a mere 19 thousand dollars I can buy a computer that'll play Crysis maxed out 20 times? Neato

Good deal! Everyone should get one xD

That is definitely a high end machine, i wonder though if you can find more bang for your buck for that much.

Its nice to see some good hardware for the not so savy consumer , but to call the people buying this "enthusiasts" is a long shot... A true enthusiast would much rather build there own ..

I'm pretty sure you can get more bang for the buck, this to me looks like a wild version of alienware, but meh, with that money I'd get something like a car. But that thing does look like it would eat Crysis, twice.

There is always a massive markup when buying a pre-built rig.

This does seem like the quite a beast of a machine. I wont be buying anything in this price range any time soon, but a man can dream..

much expensive, i'll be gear up the inside of PC not the outside, like old saying "don't judge the book by it's cover" meaning if the outside is look old but the inside is like having a F1 engine, lol...

Meh, just another pre-built, way to expensive, enthusiast computer.

On the other hand I really like the look of the case. I was pretty interested when SilverStone brought out the Raven series with vertical airflow systems. But this case looks nicer than the Ravens IMO, I would be interested in getting just the case if possible.

I'm going to second the sympathies toward the case. It's a really sweet looking design. Given the chance, I might buy one, but only at a reasonable price.

As many have already said, it'd be far cheaper to just go to newegg and build one of these for far cheaper and just build it yourself. It's really not all that hard to learn contrary to popular belief. A couple of weeks of asking good questions on a forum got me the know-how to do it myself. And if I can do it, anyone can. To all of you out there that are dreaming of this kind of thing? Try it! Just wear gloves and then read the labels on the cables and on the motherboard/component. Plug it in and go. It's not very difficult. I'd even go so far as to say that the idea that it's difficult to learn this is a complete myth.

As for the idea of selling a pre-built high end rig like this? It has always been just that. An idea. It's a good idea, but it's not cost-effective. Clearly. 19 grand is a tuition payment at a very Ivy league school. Several years tuition at a lower end school. Or a half-decent car. A multi-thousand dollar computer? Gimme a break. If you're rolling in cash and you've paid off your house, then by all means. Most of us have yet to find a job.

Whoa! 19 grand o.0 no way! It will be outdated in 5 years anyway, plus, you can build your own pc and get a better deal. (if you know how) This computer is prob for rich kids who just want the high performace pre-made w/o the worry of anything else. Do you really need maxed out performace anyway? What are you trying to run...10 human brains trying to predict the future?

Looks really cool, but it seems like the target market for these systems (along with Alienware and Voodoo) is the same market that also builds their own PCs. It would be interesting to get some stats on just many "ethusiast" systems are actually sold each year. Can't imagine that it would be too many.