by Project Stealth is in part the result of a clever redesign of the standard ATX motherboard, moving the connectors to the back of the PCB. Maingear patented this design back in 2011 and bought it from several companies at the time, but couldn’t find a willing design partner.
Long story short, Santos was more interested in seeing this innovative design become a reality and moving the industry forward than filing lawsuits. And so it partnered with Gigabyte to bring Project Stealth to market.
“Gigabyte’s Project Stealth takes advantage of Maingear’s revolutionary patent and moves all cable connections to the back of the motherboard to simplify setup. This includes connectors for ATX power, CPU power, fans, USB, audio, front panel and more,” Maingear explained in a press release earlier this year.
This unique design effectively hides each individual cable from view, with only the hoses of the all-in-one CPU cooler visible in the foreground. The result is an ultra-clean design with no wires or cables to restrict airflow.
Configuring a Maingear Stealth Gaming PC
For anyone interested, Maingear’s stealth gaming PC prices start at $1,999 for a modest configuration. The base setup consists of a 6-core/12-thread 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12400F processor clocked at 2.5GHz to 4.4GHz, Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB air cooler, Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Elite Stealth motherboard, 16GB Fury Beast RGB DDR5- 5200 RAM, GeForce RTX 3070 Stealth, 512GB Intel 670p SSD, EVGA 750W SuperNova power supply and Windows 11 Home. All of this is housed in a custom case designed for specific in-game cable management.
That’s about $1,500 worth of hardware and software (Windows 11), depending on what price premium you set for the custom chassis and specific version of the motherboard and GPU. Considering the boutique build quality and support you can expect from Maingear, we’d say the asking price is pretty fair. However, we haven’t spent any practical time on a stealth build,
