At CES this week, MSI showed off its upcoming slate of gaming components. In addition to a handful of motherboards sporting military-camo paint jobs (check down below for images and specs of those), one of the coolest things we saw was an external graphics box that connects via Thunderbolt 3 to provide top-end graphics to any PC.
The G.U.S., short for Graphics Upgrade System, uses 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 to provide graphics for whatever rig (or mini-PC) you connect it to. It has a built-in 500W 80 Plus Gold power supply, as well as a handful of USB 3.0 ports—three Type-A (one with quick-charge) and one Type-C. At CES, MSI had the box outfitted with a GTX 1080 connected to an Intel NUC not much bigger than the connected mouse.
This isn't the first we've seen of external graphics (Alienware and Razer have both offered something like this). Often, the cost of the external box ends up being close enough to that of a moderate system that it makes the whole proposition questionable. It's a rather niche device, but if you've been looking for external GPU solutions keep an eye out for GUS.
Also on display was a colorful custom desktop sporting dual GTX 1080s and a custom motherboard. Nothing really new to speak of, but RGB was out in full force.
Speaking of motherboards, here's a look at MSI's new offerings, the Z270 Gaming M7 (which we used for our Kaby Lake testing), Z270 Tomahawk, and H270 Tomahawk Arctic. AMD also had X370 XPower Gaming Titanium and B350 Tomahawk boards on display, which will support AMD's upcoming Ryzen processors.
Z270 Gaming M7
- Supports 7th / 6th Gen Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron processors for LGA 1151 socket
- Supports dual channel DDR4-4000+(OC) memory
- Supports 2-way Nvidia SLI and 3-way AMD CrossFire
- 3x PCI-E 3.0x16 slots
- 3x Turbo M.2 (32Gbps)
- 1x Turbo U.2
- 3x USB 3.1 Gen2
- 6x USB 3.1 Gen1
- 7x USB 2.0
Z270 Tomahawk
- Supports 7th / 6th Gen Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron processors for LGA 1151 socket
- Supports dual channel DDR4-3800+(OC) memory
- 3x PCI-E 3.0x16 slots
- 6x SATA 6Gbps ports
- 2x M.2 slots
- 2x USB 3.1 Gen2
- 8x USB 3.1 Gen1
- 6x USB 2.0
H270 Tomahawk Arctic
- Supports 7th / 6th Gen Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron processors for LGA 1151 socket
- Supports dual channel DDR4-2400 memory
- 3x PCI-Ex1 slots
- 6x SATA 6Gbps ports
- 2x M.2 slots
- 2x USB 3.1 Gen2
- 8x USB 3.1 Gen1
- 6x USB 2.0
X370 XPower Gaming Titanium
- Supports AMD Socket AM4 Ryzen series processors and 7th Gen APU series processors
- Supports dual channel DDR4-2667+(OC) memory
- 3x PCI-E 3.0x16 slots
- 2x Turbo M.2
- 1x Turbo U.2
- 3x USB 3.1 Gen2
- 8x USB 3.1 Gen1
- 7x USB 2.0
B350 Tomahawk
- Supports AMD Socket AM4 Ryzen series processors and 7th Gen APU series processors
- Supports dual channel DDR4-2667+(OC) memory
- 1x Turbo M.2
- 8x USB 3.1 Gen1
- 6x USB 2.0
