Due to its involvement in the esports scene, MSI has become a serious player in the world of gaming PCs. Here at CES , the company has brought a swath of new high-end PC gaming gear.
The Taiwanese company announced a number of new products, including two curved, gaming monitors, the Z370 Godlike Gaming motherboard, a couple of premium gaming components, and an updated desktop gaming PC.
Gaming monitors
Optix MPG27C / Optix MPG27CQ
These two monitors are MSI’s first shot at a curved monitor — both 27 inches and both with an 1800R curve. Most importantly, these curved monitors feature a 144 Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time to make sure your gaming experience is as immersive as possible.
As for port selection, you have a lot of options: Two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, one USB-B, and two USB-A ports. Missing, unfortunately, is USB-C.
The only real difference between the two monitors is the resolution: The MPG27C has a 1080p display, while the MPG27CQ has a 1440p “WQHD” display. Both monitors also have the fun color flashes on both the front and back, which come with support for SteelSeries GameSense for programming notifications to correspond to different lights.
Desktop PCs
Trident 3 Arctic 8th-gen
This is an iterative update to the Trident 3 Arctic, MSI’s high-end gaming desktop from 2017. There’s not much different here, except that you’ve now got the Intel 8th Generation processor and Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card.
Infinite X
The Infinite X is also getting the update to eighth-generation CPUs. The gaming desktop is a more traditional tower, but it has some nifty little features, as well as some of the high-end components you need to power your gaming. Most notably, you’re getting the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card, Core i7 -8700K, 16GB of RAM, and the Silent Storm Cooling 3 PRO cooling system.
Also, you get a total of nine USB ports, including a USB-C port. These two updates, along with the Aegis Ti3 gaming desktop update, will be out later this year, with pricing details to come.
Gaming Components
Z370 Godlike Gaming Motherboard
MSI also has a couple of high-end, gaming-focused PC components to show off. The first is the “Godlike” gaming motherboard, which received a CES 2018 Innovation Award Honoree. The motherboard comes with a variety of features that should entice PC gamers, like its built-in switch with wireless extender, four available slots for DDR4 RAM with Steel Armor, and support for Xtreme Audio DAC with Nahimic 2.
Most importantly, it does all that with compatibility with Intel’s eighth-generation CPU technology.
GeForce 1080 Ti Lightning gaming graphics card
Lastly, MSI announced its latest graphics card, the GeForce 1080 Ti Lightning. MSI says the graphics card is built for overclocking and maximum performance levels. It features what it calls “Tri-Frozr” thermal design.
There is also a big emphasis being put on the “VR-ready” nature of the graphics card, driven by Nvidia VRWorks technology.
