Introduction

Things are a bit different today as I bring you this latest review. Maingear had gotten in contact with Cameron and asked if they could show off their latest and greatest CPU cooling solution that they are now offering their buyers to cool the CPU in their pre-configured PCs, specifically The Shift and The Quantum Shift offerings. Maingear used to deliver its systems with large weighty air coolers and have found over the last decade of business that transportation can wreak havoc on a system, more specifically the CPU socket and anything under it as the coolers may break loose. This lead Maingear to keep searching for a better solution to both the issue of possible damage incurred from the coolers weight, and more importantly to deliver better performance than what even the best air coolers can offer.

Maingear prides themselves on delivering premium quality products along with thorough and personal support for the systems and is why they went to CoolIT to partner up to design a custom solution to fit inside of the SilverStone RV01 chassis. We all know that SilverStone long ago jumped ahead of the curve and started cooling their cases with 180mm fans. This gave Maingear a unique opportunity that they took full advantage of. Maingear could have followed suit with Corsair, Antec, CoolIT, or Asetek and just deliver the standard 120mm solution that we have seen in many, many forms, even one with a dual 120mm radiator! For Maingear that wasn't enough, they want to deliver their customers something even better.

Since there isn't much weight in any of the AIO head units, they are the perfect solution to remove the stress from the motherboard in any form of transit, limiting company returns and customer disappointment. Even with the fact of moving to a single 180mm radiator, Maingear took it a step further and offers a shroud/offset component to these units. This allows the EPIC 180 we are about to take a look at to not only perform better than if the fan was connected directly to the radiator, the main reason was to allow for longer PSUs with the offset. From what I have seen looking at the pages in the links I provided earlier, the way this unit is incorporated into the chassis delivers the best looking results I have seen with any AIO cooler before. It leaves the chassis of the Shift and Quantum shift very clean and empty looking as it hides the bulk of this superior AIO cooling solution for CPUs.