Hands On With MSI’s MEG Vision X AI PC: Now, Your Desktop Tower’s a Monitor, Too

LAS VEGAS–At CES 2025, we have been covering a vast fleet of laptops and desktops packing the very latest components, but we’re seeing a lot of familiar, last-year designs, just refreshed with new innards. MSI brought along one of the few desktop PCs with a wholly original look: its MEG Vision X AI 2nd gaming desktop.

This tower certainly has some interesting features inside the box. But its main draw is a full-size vertical screen on the front panel. We first saw this PC as a prototype (surrounded, mind you, by a mob every time we visited it) back at Computex 2024, and it’s resurfaced as a fully functional, release-ready PC.

The Vision X AI 2nd features Intel’s “Arrow Lake” 200S processors (that’s what the “2nd” is all about, given this is, er, only the first instance of this PC), Nvidia graphics, liquid cooling, and some nifty interior-cleanup features. The Vision X will launch in Q2 of this year, with pricing and more specific availability details to come later. Watch the video above for a quick tour of the system, and read for our impressions and more information below.

This is a substantial tower, and its size serves the functional purpose of making the front-panel display tall and wide enough to be useful; a narrower case would diminish the point and impact of the screen. The case’s full HD touch display runs down nearly the entire front of the chassis. It’s approximately 13.3 inches and resembles a big, glossy laptop screen turned on end. In my poking and prodding, it was highly responsive, and, even though full HD is a little low-res these days, it’s perfectly fine for the panel size and what it is, and it looks brilliant with the glossy finish MSI applied.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

We’ve seen a handful of side-panel screens over the years in exotic towers and mods, but big screens are less common, still, on the front of the system. Your desk layout will have to be arranged just the right way for you to see the screen clearly, but if you can make it work, there are several potential use cases. You can use the screen in the obvious ways as a second monitor, extended from your Windows desktop. Or you can use software to deploy a cool touch UI, placing app shortcuts there, displaying hardware monitoring data, or otherwise customizing it to your liking.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

The “AI” in the name of the system hints at the NPU-equipped Arrow Lake CPU inside, but it’s also a sop to the AI functionality of this system. It’s equipped with an integrated mic, and you can give your system commands and request functions (say, to open a certain control panel or tweak a certain setting) and have the front panel reflect your wishes.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

‘Arrow Lake S’ Computation, and Project Zero Inspiration

The glorious front panel is clearly the main attraction of the Vision X, but it’s not the only feature of note. Inside, you’ll find Intel’s Arrow Lake 200S processors—running up to the Core Ultra 9 285K chip and Nvidia graphics. (At the time we looked at the machine, it was running a GeForce RTX 40-series graphics card, but RTX 50 series will be in the offing by the time this PC launches.)

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

Also of interest is the proprietary motherboard, which MSI designed, inspired by its Project Zero initiative. The Project Zero ecosystem, which debuted at last Computex, features boards and PC-case layouts designed to hide and minimize as many cables and connectors as possible. The aim is to deliver a clean final look for your PC’s interior, particularly where towers have a large clear side window like this one. MSI tells us this is not technically a Project Zero-compliant board (it doesn’t comply with a standard form factor), but it’s designed with similar intentions for this case.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

Otherwise, the Vision X AI 2nd is the high-end gaming PC you would expect, with liquid CPU cooling, support for multiple SSDs, Wi-Fi 7, and some flashy system lighting. The design includes independent air chambers and SSD temperature monitoring.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

As you may have been starting to suspect, none of this will come cheap. MSI is still nailing down the final details, since it’s set to launch in Q2. Still, the representatives provided us with a rough estimate of $4,000-plus for fully loaded versions of this tower, depending on the exact configuration.

(Credit: Mark Stetson)

When units become available for review, we’ll circle back with far more hands-on time and testing. For now, start thinking of the best uses for that built-in second screen–and where you’ll put the Vision X to maximize the view.

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Executive Editor and PC Labs Director

I have been a technology journalist for 30-plus years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine (and later, its digital counterpart), aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person. I was Computer Shopper’s editor in chief for its final nine years, after which much of its digital content was folded into PCMag.com. I also served, briefly, as the editor in chief of the well-known hard-core tech site Tom’s Hardware.

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