Gadgetory

Hey guys this is Austin. Are you ready for a $4000 gaming Mac Pro? With the Vortex it’s clear that MSI had a pretty clear benchmark in mind while designing. Put it next to the Mac Pro and you’ll see it’s a very similar concept, you’re getting a small chassis that’s built around packing some serious power. Where the Mac Pro is rocking a single aluminum shell the Vortex looks a bit more like a gaming PC with an LED that runs up and over the case. The idea is the same on both, you’ll find a powerful CPU along with two graphics cards that are built around a central heatsink. There’s a fan that pulls in air from the bottom and exhausts it up top, it’s actually a fairly interesting take on the traditional PC tower. The Mac Pro makes it simple to open it up but there’s really not much you can upgrade beyond the memory. As similar as they are in theory though they’re aimed at very different audiences, the Mac Pro has options for up to 12 core CPUs and more professional oriented features like ECC memory where the Vortex trades that in for more consumer grade hardware that’s better suited for gaming. Even though it uses a lot of custom parts to make a form factor like this work inside you’ll still find a Core i7-6700K, 16 or 32 gigabytes of DDR4 memory and either a pair of GTX 960s or GTX 980s. However there’s a pretty massive price difference depending on which spec you go for. If you opt for the 960 model the Vortex will run $2200 where the 980 model is nearly twice as expensive at $4000. Considering the only other difference is the jump from 16 to 32 gigs of memory this is a hard pill to swallow especially when you consider just how cool the rest of the hardware is. On both you’re getting 256 gigs of PCIe storage in RAID which delivers ridiculous read and write speeds in addition to a normal one terabyte hard drive for storage. You’ve also got a huge selection of ports too with four USB 3.0, two HDMI, a pair of Ethernet along with two USB-C based Thunderbolt 3 ports and two Mini DisplayPorts. Even though it’s a bit larger than the Mac Pro it’s still absolutely tiny when you consider the kind of hardware you’re getting inside, it should fit in easily on nearly any desk. You can also adjust the LED lighting to make it fit in with your setup or just turn it off altogether if you like. When you boot it up you’ll find a bit of bloat including a Norton subscription but it’s fairly minimal, you’ll even get a year of XSplit included and everything else is easy enough to clean up fairly quickly. I did run into an odd USB bug with my Samsung T1 drive that I keep my Steam library on, it alternated between freezing up the Vortex and just not being recognized until I used a USB-C adapter where things worked perfectly. You do get MSI Afterburner preinstalled if you’d like to give overclocking the GPUs a try along with the Dragon Center software for the CPU but considering the form factor and 450 watt power supply there’s not a ton of headroom left. MSI has aimed this at being a solid VR ready gaming PC and with a pair of GTX 980s this really shouldn’t be a problem but is it really worth the extra upgrade cost? It depends on what you want to do. With graphics horsepower like this maxing games at 1440p is no problem and even 4K gaming is totally doable. The Vortex also works well for VR, you’ve got enough ports to run basically any headset out there and with the minimum spec being a GTX 970 a pair of 980s gives you plenty of headroom. It is a bit behind the dual GTX 980 powered Electron build I made a while back but considering the form factor that shouldn’t be a huge surprise. At $4000 though you really are paying for the form factor, as cool as it is you could build a system with similar performance for a lot less. The GTX 960 model is actually a bit more interesting to me, at $2200 it’s fairly reasonable for all but the most demanding gaming and you’re still getting the same small case and beefy specs. There’s no denying the Vortex is a unique gaming PC that would be difficult to build yourself but you’re definitely paying for it. So what do you guys think about the Vortex? Let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one!