Never has the world viewed a trashcan with more eroticism than when Apple unveiled their radically redesigned, cylindrical, Mac Pro. Its aesthetic is so utterly removed from the traditional desktop tower that, as a PC gamer, you couldn’t help but wonder if your life would be somehow more fulfilling if your own machine were squeezed into such a sleek cylinder. Wonder no more – MSI have managed to replicate the Mac Pro’s corner-eschewing design, and stuff a bunch of high-powered PC gaming components into it. It’s called the Vortex.
Unveiled at CES and available in March 2016 (crikey, that’s this year now isn’t it), the Vortex fits an Intel Core i7 6700K CPU, an M.2 SSD and two NVIDIA GTX 980s in SLI into a slender 6.5-litre case, chilled by a bespoke “360-degree Silent Storm” cooler design.
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Not content to merely raise eyebrows on a surface level, the Vortex’s componentry itself it also a bit unusual: it’s all powered by a relatively low-power 450-watt PSU. Both 980s, CPU, the lot. Now, as PC Gamer reports, each graphics card requires 165W of power, and the CPU need 95W.
I’m no mathematician, but to me that makes 425W and brings the PSU awfully close to its max. MSI have no doubt harnessed their expertise in the notebook market to get that impressive low power draw from the Vortex, though they’re not going into specifics as to how at the current time.
When the Vortex ships in March, it’ll set you back something in the region of $4000 for the dual-GTX 980 model. If that’s a bit rich for your tastes, there’ll also be a dual-GTX 960 model priced at around $2000. And if that’s a bit rich for your tastes too, I guess you’ll just have to slum it and have a PC with edges like the rest of us.