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MSI Vortex gaming PC finally available, starting at US $2,199

by on17 March 2016


With GTX 960 SLI or GTX 980 SLI

Originally unveiled by MSI at CES 2016 show in January, the cylindrical-shaped Vortex gaming PC is now finally available for US $2,199.

Taking a design page from Apple's book, the new MSI Vortex gaming PC is currently available in two versions, depending on which two Nvidia Geforce graphics cards are placed inside. Both SKUs are based on Intel's Z170 chipset, Core i7-6700K Skylake CPU, and feature two 128GB PCIe Gen3 x4 SSDs in RAID paired up with 1TB SATA 7200RPM HDD, which is quite a lot of hardware to squeeze into a 6.5L case, especially since the options include two Geforce graphics cards in SLI. 

The base, US $2,199 priced SKU, has two GTX 960 3GB graphics card in SLI and comes equipped with 16GB of DDR4-2133 memory. We rechecked MSI's press release, the specification page and a couple of listings so the 3GB is not a mistake as MSI apparently decided to use the GTX 960 OEM (and not the retail desktop) graphics cards so you are looking at a GTX 960 with GM204 GPU, 1280 CUDA cores and 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 192-bit memory interface. Bear in mind that the standard desktop GTX 960 comes with a GM206 GPU with 1024 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 128-bit memory interface, so MSI's choice is a better one.

The more expensive, US $3,999 priced SKU, is a bit more powerful as it packs two GTX 980 8GB graphics cards in SLI as well as a 32GB of DDR4-2133 memory. 

Bear in mind that both of these graphics cards appear to be based on a mobile MXM module, so specifications are still a bit unclear as there is no GTX 960 3GB in Nviida's notebook GPU lineup.

As detailed earlier, the MSI Vortex features the MSI 360° Silent Storm Cooling system, which draws the air from the bottom and pushes it over components and out through the top of the case, same as on the Mac Pro system. MSI is promising that it will be very quiet, under 37dBA under full load, so hopefully it will be able to keep all those components well cooled. 

The list of specifications also include Killer DoubleShot-X3 Pro chip with dual Gigabit LAN and 802.11ac WiFi, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI and two DisplayPort outputs. The entire system is powered by 450W 80Plus Gold-certified PSU. 

Both MSI Vortex SKUs have already showed up in the US and we managed to find it listed at Amazon.com. Unfortuantely, European listings only show the more expensive SKU priced at rather steep €3,999.99.

msi vortexgamingPC 1

msi vortexgamingPC 1

msi vortexgamingPC 1

msi vortexgamingPC 1

 

Last modified on 17 March 2016
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