The “gamer aesthetic” is a shifting, nebulous factor. From the clear plastics of the ’90s to immediately’s seas of rainbow LEDs and brushed metallic, we’ve seen a number of tendencies come and go. And so has MSI, particularly with regards to the designs of their personalized graphics playing cards. On his option to Computex again in June, Gordon swung by MSI’s Taipei workplaces to take a look at an enormous and interesting assortment of the corporate’s custom-made coolers, followers, and shrouds.

MSI has a particular look to its shroud designs, inserting the followers entrance and middle on double- and triple-fan cooler designs. Lately they’ve gone for a definite octagonal look, however in the event you go all the best way again to the unique GTX 260 design from 2008, you’ll be able to see issues had been rather a lot easier and extra easy, with an elevated cooler, a lot smaller followers, and an all-aluminum shroud.

Moving by means of MSI’s cooler and shroud designs, you’ll be able to see it progress to bigger followers, bigger heatsinks, and simply usually extra sturdy designs throughout. Eventually MSI moved away from the aluminum covers to the extra ubiquitous plastics and red-and-black coloring into the 600 and 700 collection playing cards. Moving into the 900 collection you’ll be able to see a number of the weather that will probably be acquainted in the event you’ve purchased one inside the previous few years, notably the “dragon” branding. The Ventus and Evoke strains are far easier, providing up a pleasant distinction.

This was a extremely cool dive into an space of GPU design that doesn’t at all times get a number of consideration. For extra seems on the previous and current of pc {hardware}, you should definitely subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.