Gadgetory

the six and a half litre SLI equipped core i7 cylinder shaped PC that MSI first showed off at CES 2016 refusing to allow me to see the insides apparently for fear that I would break it which is fair I suppose is shipping now so after all the waiting men I have finally got my hands on a finished unit of the MSI vortex g65 to validate their claims that it is fast small and quiet while looking in my eyes pretty freaking cool let's get down to it glass wire is the intuitive easy-to-use firewall software that reveals and visualizes your network traffic in real time get it free now and use offer code Linus to upgrade and save 10% for added features things got off to a good start when I first booted windows and was greeted by a product registration and a prompt to download an install Google Chrome a nice touch by the way to not even pre-install your bloatware making it truly optional then took a turn down poo stick Avenue with a gigantic Norton registration pop-up let's see what else is on here some of this stuff is ok afterburner for overclocking the video card there majimak DSP utility and the one year xsplit gamecaster license I can live with but battery calibration doesn't have a battery MSI social media collection the helpdesk seemed like a good idea but most of what's in here feels even less useful than in Windows his own help tools let's move on to hardware things get a lot more impressive here measuring a mere ten and a half inches tall and about seven and a half inches in diameter the entire computer is not that much bigger than a single gtx 980 reference card and it's got two gtx 980 s inside not to mention it has something the 918 never had RGB lighting I guess that explains the four thousand dollar asking price in terms of Io there's nothing at the front but a power button but I don't really mind that given how easy the system is to reach around to the back for a fairly easy access to most of the ample connectivity starting at the top is optical audio three-and-a-half millimeter audio jacks or speakers in a microphone four USB 3.0 five gigabit type-a port to HDMI 1.4 ports wouldn't have minded if those were HDMI 2.0 two Gigabit LAN ports powered by killer networks two mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports and finally two reversible type-c USB ports that can handle USB 3 DisplayPort 1.2 or even thunder three duty let's move inside there are actually two different configurations on the MSI US site at the time of writing this but the only way in which they differ is the installed system memory and graphics card setup so they both pac and intel core i7 6700 k skylake quad core hyper threaded cpu with a maximum 4.4 gigahertz turbo boost speed and assumed upgrade ability to the upcoming codenamed KB Lake architecture thanks to a socketed cpu design they both feature z170 chipset motherboard that's been fully customized to fit in this unusual form factor and provide all the necessary internal connectivity to MXM video card slots for the GPUs a mini PCIe for the killer and 1535 AC wireless this is a mu-mimo capable wave 2 device by the way 2 m2 PCIe x4 gen 3 slots for the 2 by 128 gig raid 0 boot drive configuration or whatever you want to put in there after the fact a SATA 3 port for the 1 terabyte tuna 1/2 inch hard drive end customized power connectors for the 450 watt 80 plus gold chickeny power supply so then as far as differences are concerned the lower end model features 16 gigs of DDR for sodium memory and 2 3 gig gtx 960 s in sli while the other packs 32 gigs of ram and 2 8 gig gtx 980 s in sli it's important to note that each of these are full desktop configuration GPUs similar to the full-fat MXM form factor gtx 980 video cards that started showing up in laptops around september 2015 neither of them comes cheap by the way the entry-level one goes for 2200 u.s. dollars with the top-of-the-line ski running about four thousand US dollars like i alluded to before so how then does emma side justify a price tag like this well when you've got a unique product I guess you pretty much dictate what it's worth and they've got that while there is one other high performance trashcan shape pc on the market' the 2013 Mac Pro that one will appeal to a very different customer sure they're both round and they both feature an assisted convection cooling configuration with a large fan that draws air in the bottom and exhausts it from the top of the unit but other than that I would argue they're really nothing alike thanks to Apple's use of an LGA 2011 CPU socket they can cram up to 18 CPU cores into theirs but while both computers boast dual video cards the workstation fire pro GPUs in the Mac Pro are more appealing to creative professionals than they are to gamers the vortex g35 LGA 1151 socket can by contrast hold only a maximum of four CPU cores but this feels like a sensible direction given that more than four CPU cores hasn't been demonstrated to help with straight gaming I've got a video by the way showing what it takes to finally overwhelm an eight-core Extreme Edition check that out here so that extra power and thermal budget can be used to throw more video card horsepower at the problem so what does that translate to then well really really good performance as advertised the vortex g65 is a very strong little gaming machine capable of handling anything you can throw at it including gaming at resolutions above 1080p gaming with textures maxed thanks to the eight gigs of VRAM per GPU and thanks to the top-of-the-line consumer-grade core i7 processor but of course all this hardware means nothing if it creates an unpleasant user experience due to acoustics or doesn't run to its full potential due to thermal issues and I'm pleased to report that the acoustics much like the Mac Pro are shocking with the tower emitting only an unobtrusive low hum even while gaming and the thermals are pretty darn good on the GPUs you'll see about 75 degrees in our Crysis 3 skybox and Unigine Heaven tests and while under full CPU load in i-264 that's without the GPUs doing anything by the way the CPU did sit in the low 80s in a 19 degree ambient room this result does to me indicate a poorly designed computer that kind of a sustained multi-core load would only be seen in short bursts like while rendering a video for example on a gaming machine so all it means to me is that I probably wouldn't find myself overclocking this system in spite of its advertised overclock ability which leads us then to the conclusion is the vortex g65 worth your money I guess it depends what you're after while Thunderbolt 3 and external PCI Express expansion enclosures seem to be finally reaching maturity making me feel better about giving up all of my PCI Express slots I find the core component upgrade ability of this device a little bit worrisome with future CPUs likely to arrive in only 4 core variants and no guarantee at this time that MSI will be offering Pascal based GPU upgrade modules like they promised on their GTA ii titan but with that said if you're willing to pay and videos premium for those MXM gtx 980 video cards for a super small gaming rig that packs a shocking punch then there's simply nothing else on the market like it and we're back with another offer from our friends at mass drop if you guys aren't familiar with mass drop head over to their site it's linked in the video description they've got all kinds of cool stuff everything from wow my table cloths going away that's ok they don't have table cloths as far as I know but they do have things like knives drones uh audiophile gear like headphones amps and DACs keyboards all kinds of cool stuff camping supplies even and the way it works is the community says hey we want to buy this thing but and it's kind of expensive and that's how it goes yeah ok cool we'll go to the manufacturer we'll get them to slash the price as long as a bunch of you guys agree to buy it so the more people glom on to a drop the further down the drop goes to a maximum limit and they've got a pretty cool offer to talk about today this is the AKG K 553 pro headphones they feature a closed yet open design which offers the noise isolated use of closed back headphones with a more expansive soundstage it's an over your head wrong with soft leather out of your pads it terminates an eighth inch or a three and a half millimeter jack but also includes a quarter inch adapter and features 50 millimeter drivers it's got an MSRP of 299 but it's available on mass drop for one 1999 at the lowest drop so check out the link in the video description that is draw dot slash LTT dash 553 thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by joining our forum using our affiliate code to shop it and us on instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one or even with a direct monthly contribution now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what should I watch next so click that little button up there to check out our latest video on channel super fun where the boys and I well we do something super and it's fun