A Holographic Dragon, With AI Smarts, Lives Inside MSI’s Newest MEG Desktop

(Credit: John Burek)

TAIPEI—To be sure: It's become increasingly hard to differentiate one maxed-out, high-end gaming desktop from another. You can pack a massive tower with the latest Intel or Ryzen processors, slot in a monstrous GeForce RTX 5080 or 5090, and add all the RGB bling imaginable, but at a certain point, they all start to blend together. However, MSI has managed to build a rig that no-doubt stands out from any other tower in recent memory: The company stuck an AI avatar of its iconic dragon mascot in a front-mounted cylinder.

Previewed ahead of Computex 2026, the newly unveiled MEG Vision X2 AI+ desktop PC is the latest addition to MSI's Enthusiast Gaming (MEG) series. Under the hood, the system delivers the bleeding-edge hardware you would expect, including up to an Intel "Arrow Lake Refresh" Core Ultra CPU, a hulky video card up to GeForce RTX 5090 (like in the unit I saw), and gobs of DDR5 memory and storage. (Leading-edge PCI Express 5.0 SSDs are, as you'd expect, supported.) But the real conversation-starter sits squarely on the front of the chassis.

MSI has integrated a holographic cylinder into the case that houses Lucky, the company's long-tenured red dragon mascot, now imprisoned and serving as an AI "physical layer" and a relatable avatar-style face for the system's new agentic AI underpinnings. Despite being penned in, Lucky remains remarkably chipper, though; here, Lucky is working under the umbrella of what MSI dubs "LuckyClaw"—a clear nod to the open-source OpenClaw and the Nvidia NemoClaw reference stack for agentic AI.

The AI is designed to respond, adapt, and engage with users through spoken queries; nothing new there. But here, the dragon acts as a visible front-end UI or avatar for the agentic output. Instead of mere text, you get a voice explanation. As a hologram, he's living in a space MSI is calling its "AI Holostage."

All the World's an AI Holostage

The cylinder on the front of the MEG tower is topped by a striking logo circle...

Inside the cylinder, the space is bisected by a vertically oriented 2D panel. This panel, employing some projection jiggery-pokery and likely some mirrors, projects Lucky into the space as a 3D hologram. (You do need to be standing more or less directly in front of the machine in a "sweet spot" for the three-dimensional visual effect to properly take hold.)

The AI agent is voice-activated. You speak your queries into a microphone input on the front left of the tower chassis. Alternately, you can type your queries into a request box onscreen.

Trying the Agentic AI: Do You Feel Lucky?

As for how smart this dragon actually is, our early demo showed that while Lucky may be a well-seasoned employee of MSI, he is still in training as an AI avatar. The character itself has also been rechristened "LuckyClaw" and outfitted with a pair of golden lobster-style claws and armor. MSI noted that the LLM powering the little guy had just been uploaded the day prior, and its training data was heavily focused on MSI's Computex 2026 product lineup and the products' tech specs and traits. That was the limit of his abilities.

Ask the dragon a question about, say, MSI's complex new mix of gaming and productivity monitors, and he could rattle off key specs and basic insights like a machine gun, talking animatedly from inside the AI Holostage in a high-pitched voice. He did show something of an unnatural pause before replying to each query, with a "Thinking" progress message on screen to keep us engaged. But he was clearly running locally off the powerful internal components on the display system.

However, we decided to get a bit fresh with him. When we went off-script to ask Lucky about the weather in Taipei, or about who might win the NBA Finals back in the US, the dragon was predictably stumped. Lucky ultimately fell back on generic platitudes, suggesting we check the NBA app, or told us to look up the weather ourselves, as that was out of his job description, before politely steering the conversation back to how he could help us with MSI technology info. Lucky, at least, knows how to stay in his lane tactfully.

While it remains to be seen just how versatile and effective LuckyClaw will be as a daily AI assistant, it is an undeniably unique way to give MSI brand fans a fun, interactive centerpiece for their gaming setups. Talking to a chatbot or agent through a solely typed UI is one thing; here, you get a little guy you can talk to face-to-face inside your tower.

MSI has not yet shared exact pricing for this MEG desktop, noting that regional availability and launch timing will vary. Given the high-end parts you'd want to complement an AI avatar with, to make him worth talking to, it won't be cheap.

About Our Expert

John Burek

Executive Editor and PC Labs Director

My Experience

I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 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.

During that time, I've built and torn down enough desktop PCs to equip a city block's worth of internet cafes. Under race conditions, I've built PCs from bare-board to bootup in under 5 minutes. I never met a screwdriver I didn't like.

I was also a copy chief and a fact checker early in my career. (Editing and polishing technical content to make it palatable for consumer audiences is my forte.) I also worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of "Dummies"-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I'm a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University's journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

The Technology I Use

I use a lot of computers on rotation in my daily work, but I rely on just a few to get things done. I split my work life mostly between a Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (a 15-inch Ryzen model), paired with a Lenovo ThinkVision portable monitor, and a custom-built big-chassis Windows 10 desktop PC that has served me well for years now. (Specs: Liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, 32GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1080 card.) That's all in a giant chassis with six hard drives and SSDs packing its bays. (As I upgrade systems, I just keep moving the old warhorse drives over.) This behemoth is hooked up to a 32-inch LG monitor.

I also have a bunch of PCs around the house, all custom builds: another one attached to my main TV (for gaming and occasional forays into VR), a mini-PC on the bedroom TV (acting as a media server), and a Mini-ITX desktop in a corner of the living room...just because. I carry around an oversize OnePlus phone, but when I do long-haul travel, a vintage iPod Touch comes along, too, for old times' sake.

I wasn't always a PC guy. I cut my teeth on a cassette-drive-equipped Commodore VIC-20 in the 1980s. But I got serious with Apple desktops in the early 1990s, starting with a Macintosh SE, then a Macintosh LC, and finally one of the short-lived Umax "clone" Macs, before building my first PC and never looking back.

With all my typing and editing work over the years, I've become a huge proponent of thumb trackballs, which minimize wrist action (and my wrist pain). I have a secret cache of the long-discontinued Microsoft Trackball Optical Mouse (my personal favorite), held in an undisclosed location.

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