The PS5 and Xbox Series X are both becoming impressive consoles, but they lack the flexibility of a gaming PC and tend to be more compact than Sony and Microsoft machines. That's where Maingear comes in.

It's a small desktop with AMD's latest Ryzen 3000XT processor and the latest graphics card; Maingear claims that the desktop is so compact that it takes up about as much space as a shoebox.

Its dimensions of 6.7 inches wide and 14.4 inches deep are believable enough, but its 12.3-inch height means it is taller than the average shoebox. However, the dimensions of the Turbo PC are quite impressive, given that the system can support graphics cards up to Nivida's powerful Titan RTX.

One can well imagine it sitting neatly on the back of a TV or on one side of an entertainment system, supporting both current and next-generation games. And since you can choose between a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT CPU, AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT, or Nvidia's powerful GeForce RTX graphics card, as well as up to 64GB of RAM and a massive 16TB of storage capacity, Maingear's compact computer has the specs to outperform next-generation consoles.

To fit these specs into the small chassis, Maingear needed to set up its Apex liquid cooling system so that cold air is drawn in from the bottom of the machine and expelled from the top, much like the Xbox Series X.

The Apex liquid cooling system is a very compact system with a very low noise level. Through the use of custom tubing and a silent pump, the liquid cooling system protects the powerful components from melting, while at the same time ensuring that fan noise is not excessive. This would be useful if you plan to connect such a machine to a TV, rather than popping it under your desk. [The Turbo model, targeting 1080p, starts at $1699. There's a reason gaming consoles are so popular compared to the best gaming PCs. But at this price, you get a well-specified machine that can handle all current and near-future games, as well as more intensive tasks such as video rendering and CAD. This is something the PS5 cannot do.

Nvidia is poised to announce the GeForce RTX 3080 and other next-generation graphics cards soon, and AMD appears to have a killer GPU ready in September. So the next few months are going to be just as interesting for PC gaming as they are for Xbox and PlayStation.