MSI GAMING Nightblade

MSI GAMING Nightblade Review – Over the last few years, MSI have been aggressively expanding into different PC segments. One of their fastest expanding and successful divisions has to the gaming division which has released quite a number of interesting gaming devices such as AIOs. So the expansion continues and this time we find the company moving into the barebones PC system with the GAMING Nightblade. The concept of this barebones system is to make life a little easier for gamers who want to build a new gaming PC that doesn’t take up too much space.

MSI GAMING Nightblade, Legendary Skeletal Dragon

The Nightblade is about half the size of your standard gaming chassis but that doesn’t mean you can build a powerful rig with it. Inside the chassis lie the Z87I GAMING mini-ITX motherboard and a 600W 80+ Gold PSU, which are very good foundations for a mid-range to high-end rig. As an added bonus, the Nightblade also comes with an optical drive. Other than that, you will have to equip with other components of your choice such as the RAMs, storage and graphics card. When it comes to the graphics card, despite the small space, there is ample room to easily fit in either an AMD Radeon R9 290X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti. So there’s really no need for you to compromise in terms of graphics performance.

On top of that, the chassis is also able to accommodate one HDD or SSD and mSATA device. If you really have the budget for it, you can even get a rig that takes advantage of MSI’s Super RAID technology. To curb overheating problems in this small chassis, MSI have also included a few precautions such as a custom size CPU heatsink, a second system fan that is custom made for graphics cards over 280W and dynamically adjusts the fan speed based on CPU temperature, the MSI Dragon case fan that has a maximum fan speed of 3,600RPM and three air vents for maximum airflow. To accommodate a large graphics cards, MSI had to make it so that it is very closer to the bottom of the chassis and to give it maximum airflow, the Nightblade is designed with an open bottom but have no fear as it is protected by a dust filter.

We understand that the MSI GAMING Nightblade may be a little on the pricey side for barebones system. But it does make building a gaming rig a much simpler affair plus MSI have made sure you to cover all the bases from maximum airflow to ample space to cable management. To top it all off, this portable gaming rig just looks really cool in our books.

Pros

• Portable chassis
• Easy assembly
• Enough space to fit highend graphics cards
• Z87I GAMING motherboard
• Powerful PSU

Cons

• Expensive price

MSI GAMING Nightblade Specifications

• CPU: Supports Intel 4th Generation Core i3/i5/i7
• Chipset: Intel Z87
• Storage: Support 3.5-inch/ 2.5-inch/ 2xm-SATA
• RAM: Support 2x DDR3 DIMM, up to 16GB 3,000MHz
• Graphics: Support dual-slot up to 290mm (AMD Radeon R9 290X / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti)
• Audio Speaker: 7.1 Channel HD Audio
• Optical Drive: Slim Slot-in, Super-multi
• USB 3.0 / 2.0: 2 (Front), 4 (Rear) / 2 (Front), 2 (Rear)
• I/O Ports: 1x e-SATA, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI, 1x DisplayPort, 1x S/PDIF, 1x PS/2, 1x Clear CMOS Button, 2x Antenna Connectors, 6x OFC Audio Jacks
• Connectivity: Intel Wireless-AC 7260, 802.11 ac/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, Qualcomm E2205 Killer Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mic-in / Headphone-out: 1 / 1
• PSU: 600W 80+ Gold
• Dimensions: 345.8 x 277.33 x 175.7mm
• Weight: 7.6kg
• Price: USD $640