 The 6.5L 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 then, 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. GlassWire 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 and 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 Poochstick Avenue with a gigantic Norton registration pop-up. Let's see what else is on here. Some of this stuff is okay. Afterburner for overclocking the video card, their Nehemic DSP utility, and the one-year XPlit GameCaster license I can live with. But battery calibration? Doesn't have a battery. MSI social media collection? The help desk seemed like a good idea, but most of what's in here feels even less useful than Windows' own help tools. Let's move on to hardware. Things get a lot more impressive here. Measuring a mere 10.5 inches tall and about 7.5 inches in diameter, the entire computer is not that much bigger than a single GTX 980 reference card. And it's got two GTX 980s inside. Not to mention it has something the 980 never had. RGB lighting. I guess that explains the $4,000 asking price. In terms of I.O., 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 fairly easy access to most of the ample connectivity. Starting at the top is optical audio, 3.5mm audio jacks for speakers and a microphone, four USB 3.0, five gigabit Type-A ports, two 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 Thunderbolt 3 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 pack an Intel Core i7 6700K Skylake quad-core hyper-threaded CPU with a maximum 4.4 GHz turbo boost speed and assumed upgradeability to the upcoming codename Kabylake architecture thanks to a socketed CPU design. They both feature a Z170 chipset motherboard that's been fully customized to fit in this unusual form factor and provide all the necessary internal connectivity, two MXM video card slots for the GPUs, a mini PCIe for the Killer N1535AC wireless. This is an MU-MIMO capable Wave 2 device by the way, two M.2 PCIe X4 Gen 3 slots for the 2x128G RAID 0 boot drive configuration or whatever you want to put in there after the fact, a SATA 3 port for the 1TB 2.5 inch hard drive and customized power connectors for the 450W 80 plus gold chickeny power supply. So then as far as differences are concerned, the lower end model features 16GB DDR4 SODIM memory and 2 3GB GTX 960s in SLI, while the other packs 32GB of RAM and 2 8GB GTX 980s 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 US dollars with the top of the line ski running about 4000 US dollars like I alluded to before. So how then does MSI 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 trash can shaped 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 are 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's LGA 1151 socket can, by contrast, hold only a maximum of 4 CPU cores, but this feels like a sensible direction given that more than 4 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 8 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 8 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 AIDA64, 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 doesn't 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 overclockability. 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 upgradeability of this device a little bit worrisome, with future CPUs likely to arrive in only four core variants, and no guarantee at this time that MSI will be offering Pascal-based GPU upgrade modules, like they promised on their GT80 Titan. But with that said, if you're willing to pay Nvidia's 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 Massdrop. If you guys aren't familiar with Massdrop, head over to their site. It's linked in the video description. They've got all kinds of cool stuff. Everything from, wow, my tablecloth's going away. That's okay. They don't have tablecloths, as far as I know, but they do have things like knives, drones, 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 it's kind of expensive. And Massdrop goes, yeah, okay, 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 onto 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 K553 Pro headphones. They feature a closed yet open design, which offers the noise-isolated qualities of closed-back headphones, with a more expansive soundstage. It's an over-ear headphone with soft leatherette earpads. It terminates in 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 Massdrop for $119.99 at the lowest drop, so check out the link in the video description, that is draw.ps slash ltt-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 at Amazon, 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, hmm, what should I watch next? So click that little button up there to check out our latest video on channel SuperFun, where the boys and I, well, we do something super and it's fun.