I spent yesterday walking the floor of Computex 2025, checking out the latest and greatest computing tech of the year, and I got to spend a lot of time at the MSI booth.
As one of the biggest PC component makers in the world, MSI had a lot to show off on the components front, from cases to power supplies to graphics cards to motherboards, and all of it was either what I expected from MSI (their components are great), or even better, some limited edition and concept products that anyone would want to include in their own PC build.
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Starting on the premium build side of things, the MSI MEG Maestro 900L is a real showpiece of a PC case with a three-sided curved glass enclosure with diamond chamfer edges and support for a custom liquid cooling loop. It’s more or less a perfect case for a high-end build that isn’t a completely custom design.
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Next, the IRONMOUSE VTuber-themed PC build with IRONMOUSE-branded components looked fantastic, and is the kind of build and component design that should inspire a lot of builders out there to go for a similar look.
Obviously, graphics cards were a big part of MSI’s booth this year, and that makes sense, seeing as it consistently makes some of the best graphics cards on the market, especially on the higher end of the stack, like the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC, but also smaller form factor cards on the lower end of the stack like the new MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Inspire 2X OC.
Of course, with so many components, you could build a whole PC out of just MSI parts, and MSI went out of its way to showcase some of its DIY innovations that aim to make PC building easier and less intimidating for first-time builders.
In addition to its mainstream graphics card lineup, MSI also showed off new MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC and RTX 4080 Super Expert OC cards with a cool-looking grill design built into their shrouds.
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There were also some awesome special edition cards being shown off, like the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Cyclone Visual OC, which is a single, large-fan design that has an LCD display in the center.
Of course, there was also the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Titanium Edition SOC card with a lux golden-colored finish. How much this card would set you back I can’t say, but I can’t imagine it’s cheap even by RTX 5090 standards.
But the component that really stole my heart at the MSI booth yesterday was a simple bracket, one that I’m not even sure you’d be able to buy on its own, but which would come with the MSI MPG Coreliquid P13 360 AIO cooler.
See, here’s the thing. I test a lot of processors for my reviews and features, and this often involves me swapping out motherboards with different chipsets. But in order to keep results comparable between Intel and AMD processors, I really need everything else on the testbench to stay the same, including the AIO cooler.
The problem, though, is that the mounting for CPU coolers between AMD and Intel isn’t standardized. Instead, both chipmakers have their mounting screws oriented differently. Intel’s CPU cooler mountings form a square, while AMD’s form a rectangle with uneven length and height.
This means that I have to swap out the mounting bracket for the AIO cooler every time I switch between the two chip brands, and losing one of those brackets is an absolute nightmare that could wreck days of testing. I know this because it’s happened to me more than once.
Enter the MSI Unibracket. A single bracket that works with both Intel LGA 1700/1851 and AMD AM4/AM5 motherboard mountings.
As soon as I saw the Unibracket, I wanted to scream, because the solution to the problem is so blindingly obvious, I don’t understand how this part isn’t standardized across every CPU cooler manufacturer.
Their loss is MSI’s gain, however, as once I get a Coreliquid P13 360 AIO cooler in the lab, it’s all but guaranteed to be my go-to CPU cooler for the testbench for the foreseeable future.
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John.Loeffler@futurenet.com (John Loeffler)
