A lot of PC gaming enthusiasts will recommend against getting a pre-built system, but you’d be forgiven if you decide to make your wallet a few thousand dollars or pesos lighter with this pint-sized monster.
MSI has just started selling its eye-catching Vortex G65 gaming desktops in the US this April. First spotted in CES 2016, the system has an unmistakable resemblance with the cylindrical Apple Mac Pro in its internal design and overall shape, but its red trimmings, industrial curves and that illuminated red MSI dragon all screams gamer.
The MSI Vortex G65 is no taller than a ruler at around 10 inches (278 mm) and weighs lighter than your 9-pound Alienware 17 but it packs dual GTX cards, a Skylake Core i7 CPU and DDR4 RAM slots up to 64GB.
It comes in two configurations: the SLI-001 with GeForce GTX 980 GPUs in SLI or the SLI-011 with GeForce GTX 960 GPUs in SLI. Storage options include two 128 GB SSDs in RAID and 1 TB HDD at 7200 RPM paired with either 32 or 16 GB of DDR4-2133 memory.
To fit all that goodness inside a cylindrical chassis, MSI arguably borrowed design cues from Apple to install one CPU and two GPUs in a triangle arrangement to create a desktop relatively smaller than a mini-ITX. To keep them cool, both components share a heatsink that uses a single fan pulling air from underneath the chassis and dumping the hot exhaust out of the top.
The smaller form factor also means that it won’t have the space to fit a full-size desktop card. As seen in this pic, the Vortex G65 will use the MXM version of the GTX 980 (not the less powerful 980M) and the GTX 960.
The MSI Vortex is priced $2,200 (P102,000) and $4,000 (P185,000), respectively but you future owners must note that GPU upgrades for those AAA titles can be pricey in the long term.
A lot of PC gaming enthusiasts will recommend against getting a pre-built system, but you’d be forgiven if decided to make your wallet a few thousand dollars or pesos lighter with this pint-sized , dual-GPU monster.
Here’s a quick look at the specs:
