Back at CES, MSI impressed us with its new gaming PC known as the Vortex, which uses a similar cylinder shaped design to Apple's 2013 Mac Pro. The Vortex successfully crams a lot of power into a small form factor with a unique thermal design that ensures everything stays cool and quiet.
The Vortex measures in at just ten inches tall and there is a lot to like about this design. Inside of the case are several custom PCBs with enough room for SLI GTX 960s, GTX 970s or even GTX 980s alongside a desktop grade Intel Core i7 6700K, DDR4 RAM and a couple of SSDs.
The 360° Silent Storm Cooling design is set to offer superior cooling performance as well as low noise, running at just 37 dB under full load and as low as 23 dB at idle speeds, meaning this system won’t be a burden on your ears. On the I/O side you will find four USB 3.1 ports, two HDMI ports, two mini DisplayPort connections as well as USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3. It really is quite an impressive little machine and really shows how far high-performance CPUs and GPUs have come in terms of how much power is required and how much heat they put out.
The final two available configurations come with an Intel Core i7 6700K, 16GB or 32GB of RAM, Super RAID 256GB SSDs with a 1TB HDD and your choice of either SLi GTX 960s or GTX 980s. The GTX 960 model will cost $2200 while the GTX 980 model will set you back $4000.
KitGuru Says: Packing a high-performance gaming PC with two GPUs into that form factor is a true feat of engineering. Sure the systems are expensive, but there is no denying that they are impressive for sure. Hopefully, we will get the opportunity to play with one at some point!
Beautiful design, just a shame it’s so expensive and looks like it requires custom hardware, therefore limiting upgradeability.
Apple design from MSI… NO THANKS!! 100% fan of custom build!
Apple design from MSI… NO THANKS!!
Lol apple hasnt updated theyre platform or design in years and theyre price to performance is way out of proportion now and those Mac Pros run pretty dang hot under load too, Its about damn time someone took this design and did it better.. Dont get me wrong, I think the new Mac Pro was awesome when it came out, And finally Apple had done something to change the game again after not doing so for a very long time. And I get that yeah you do pay for the Apple name, But the Mac Pro is nearly about 4 years old now? And is still about 4k$ last I knew? And offers much less than half the performance of a 2000$ Pc? Its just not a good platform for video editing and all anymore when compared
But unlike the last Mac Pro it just didnt hold up as well, the hardware wasnt as crazy, I mean for gods sake the older Mac Pros you could get with refridgerant-cooled cpu coolers In a dual cpu configuration!! They remained very good for video editing for many years until tech started moving like the freight train it is now
Bottom line, I dont think the price should matter for a Mac Pro as long as it gets hardware updates to stay competitive and keep its advatages it used to have, tech keeps getting smaller and more heat and power efficient as well so theres no reason to stay stagnant