MSI’s Aegis RS mid-tower gaming desktop (starts at $1,999; $2,499 as tested, in model 11TE-089US) is the first we’ve tested with one of Intel’s new “Rocket Lake” 11th Generation desktop processors, specifically an eight-core Core i7-11700K on an MSI Z590 motherboard. Its well-designed case and top-quality components make it a compelling alternative to building your own tower. Our game testing showed that the Aegis stacked up nicely against the Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition, though that tower’s AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a little stronger in other apps. Availability remains an issue for gaming desktops (or more specifically, their core components) in early 2021, but if you can get your hands on the Aegis RS around MSI’s list price, it’s an excellent value, complete with a hard-to-get Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 video card. It earns our latest Editors’ Choice award for high-end, midsize gaming towers.
A Cool Aftermarket Vibe
There’s nothing proprietary about the Aegis RS. It uses off-the-shelf components that you can buy from an electronics retailer, making it possible to build this tower on your own, or upgrade the bits with standard parts years down the road. But why put one together yourself when MSI does it so well and covers everything with a system warranty?
The build starts off with an MSI MPG Gungnir 110R case, which is large for a mid-tower at 19 by 8.5 by 17.7 inches (HWD). The flashy aluminum and tempered-glass construction screams “gamer” aesthetic and offers ample interior views. Three of its 120mm RGB fans are visible through the divided front panel, which pulls off for accessing a washable dust filter.
Another dust filter on the top of the tower pulls off for easy cleaning.
In front of the filter are three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (one Type-C, two Type-A) and separate headphone and microphone jacks.
There are also power, reset, and LED buttons; the last toggles the RGB lighting modes between hardware and software, which I needed to do on my early test model to allow lighting control in the new MSI Center app.
More RGB lighting comes from a 120mm rear fan and the MSI Coreliquid 120R liquid cooler’s waterblock. It all brightly lights up the interior. The lighting can be dimmed or turned off in the MSI Center app. This build has no dedicated LED illumination strips, though nothing would prevent you from adding some.
Clean Inside and Out
Accessing the Aegis RS’s innards is as simple as removing two thumbscrews per side panel.
The main compartment has a clean, modern look. Well-placed cable pass-throughs on the motherboard tray keep visible wiring to a minimum. The fully modular MSI MPG A750GF 750-watt ATX power supply also helps minimize cables; it’s isolated in a separate bottom compartment in modern fashion. Conveniently, there’s a slide-out dust filter over the power supply’s intake on the underside of the tower.
The GeForce RTX 3080 card is a slightly overclocked MSI RTX 3080 Ventus 3X OC. (See our review of the similar MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio.) Its metal support bracket makes it looks even bigger than a normal RTX 3080. It has one HDMI and three DisplayPort connectors.
The motherboard is an MSI Z590 Pro WiFi, an entry-level Z590 ATX board. Two of its four UDIMM slots are populated by 8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2666 modules for a total of 16GB of dual-channel memory. This is the bare minimum for a gaming system, but it is probably the easiest component to upgrade later.
The Aegis RS takes advantage of the Z590 chipset’s support for PCI Express 4.0 with its 1TB XPG Gammix S70 solid-state drive. (We have a separate review of this drive in the works.) The SSD’s massive heatsink keeps temperatures in check for sustained usage.
For additional storage, there’s space for a 2.5-inch drive atop the power supply compartment. The other side of the tower has another 2.5-inch bay and two 3.5-inch bays, the latter in front of the power supply.
Our test unit has a 2TB hard drive in one of the 3.5-inch bays. Drive servicing is simple thanks to toolless, slide-out caddies.
All areas in this tower get plenty of airflow. There is some fan noise since the case is mostly an open design, but it’s low-pitched and blends into the background. The CPU fan is well-behaved, not varying its spin rate at every CPU spike. Gaming next to this tower with a pair of open earphones or speakers is no problem.
The Latest Wi-Fi 6E Standard
The Z590 Pro WiFi motherboard includes an Intel AX210 wireless card supporting Bluetooth and the new Wi-Fi 6E standard. Its external antennas, visible below, must be installed for meaningful range.
The port selection includes numerous USB Type-A ports (one USB 3.2 Gen 2, two 3.2 Gen 1, and four 2.0), a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, and six audio jacks (microphone, line-in, line-out, and center, side, and rear surround). There is also a PS/2 port for your old IBM Model M keyboard that you just can’t let go of. The HDMI and DisplayPort connectors are disabled since this tower has a dedicated graphics card.
Last, the Aegis RS bundles a keyboard and mouse that are much better than the average freebies you get with a retail tower.
The Vigor GK30 keyboard offers colorful backlighting and an aggressive typeface, though no other special features. The Clutch GM08 gaming mouse is more upscale, with an interchangeable weight system and DPI-switcher button. Like the keyboard, it keeps things simple with a USB wired connection.
Testing the Aegis RS in 3, 2, 1: Blasting Off With “Rocket Lake”
The $2,499 Aegis RS 11TE-089US reviewed here is the most potent model in the lineup. Slated for availability in late April 2021, it includes an eight-core, 16-thread Core i7-11700K with liquid cooling (3.6GHz base, up to 5.0GHz turbo), a 10GB GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, 16GB of DDR4-2666 channel memory, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive with Windows 10 Home, and a 2TB hard drive. The warranty is just one year; it would be worthwhile upgrading to three years on a tower this expensive.
This Aegis RS configuration is a good value if you can find it for around MSRP. A comparable Alienware Aurora R11 with Core i7-10700K CPU was $2,715 at this writing; I also spotted a Core i7-11700K version of the Corsair Vengeance i7200 on that vendor’s website for a significantly higher $3,199, albeit with 32GB of memory and a two-year warranty.
MSI told us another Aegis RS model will be available for $1,999, though it didn’t disclose specifications. (At the minimum, it will probably step down to a GeForce RTX 3070.) MSI also says it may be offering other models. Unlike the MSI MEG Aegis Ti5, the Aegis RS is assembled in the United States, which gives MSI more flexibility with model configurations.
Let’s get the Aegis RS and its “Rocket Lake” chip on the launchpad. I compared it with four other gaming desktops for our benchmark charts; their basic specs are shown below.
The Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition, as mentioned, uses an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, the archrival to the Aegis’ Core i7-11700K. Another good comparison will be the previous-generation “Comet Lake” Core i7-10700K in the Dell XPS Desktop Special Edition. We’ll also see how the Aegis RS stacks up against the 10-core “Comet Lake” Core i9 chips in the Vengeance i7200 and Aegis Ti5. Ready, launch control?
Storage, Media, and CPU Tests
Our first two tests—UL’s PCMark 10 productivity performance suite and PCMark 8 storage measurement—were both flops with the Aegis RS. It’s not unusual for these benchmarks to balk at high-end, never-before-seen hardware, so the Aegis RS gets a pass; undoubtedly, it would have aced both tests. (See how we test desktops.)
Next up is a pair of CPU-crunching tests: Cinebench R15 stresses all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake test, we transcode a 12-minute 4K video down to 1080p.
These towers are all fast enough to be within a minute of each other for Handbrake. In Cinebench R15, the Aegis RS slightly trailed the Aurora R10, but was nearly 20% ahead of the Dell and its older Core i7 for solid generation-on-generation gains. It also got surprisingly close to the Core i9 processors in the Vengeance i7200 and Aegis Ti5 despite having two fewer cores.
The final test in this section involves photo editing. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the total. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.
This test rewards single- more than multi-core performance. The Aegis RS clinched the lead with one of the fastest times we’ve ever recorded. All these towers were smoking fast in this scenario.
Graphics Tests
Our first two benchmarks in this section measure the gaming performance potential of a PC. In UL’s 3DMark, we run the DirectX 11 subtests Sky Diver (lightweight, capable of running on integrated graphics) and Fire Strike (more demanding, for high-end gaming PCs). Unigine Corp.’s Superposition is another gaming simulation that uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.
Though the Aegis RS took a backseat to the Aurora R10 in Fire Strike, it led the Aegis Ti5 by a wide enough margin to suggest than its “Rocket Lake” CPU makes a difference. The Superposition 1080p test shows that those three towers and the Corsair offer similar GPU horsepower.
Now for two real games. We use the built-in benchmarks of Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider at three different screen resolutions. Far Cry 5 uses DirectX 11, while we flip the Lara Croft adventure to DirectX 12.
The Aegis RS didn’t stand out, but managed excellent frame rates in both games. Importantly, it outperformed the Aurora R10 in Far Cry 5 at the lower, more CPU-dependent 1080p and 1440p resolutions. (Pre-launch driver issues prevented the system from running Rise of the Tomb Raider at those resolutions.) Then again, the Aegis Ti5 performed almost identically, suggesting that the Aegis RS’s new CPU doesn’t give it a discernible advantage in these admittedly limited scenarios.
MSI’s Take on “Rocket Lake”: All Systems Go
The Aegis RS puts Intel’s 11th Gen processor in its best light. Its flashy aftermarket looks are genuine since it’s expertly assembled from off-the-shelf parts, most of which are MSI’s own. It’s a clean build inside and out.
Though the Core i7-11700K didn’t set any altitude records in our benchmarks, it’s a more than fair matchup with our review unit’s GeForce RTX 3080 for the latest games. MSI also took full advantage of the Intel Z590 platform by including a PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive and native Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. Indeed, with our early tests of other Rocket Lake chips at launch, and especially in light of the Core i9-11900K and its lack of any additional cores versus the Core i7-11700K, the Core i7 may be the better value for mainstream and even many highly discerning PC gamers.
Naturally, the challenge with this tower will be availability. Assuming you can find it for around (or even slightly above) MSRP, it’s a great buy, lifting off with our Editors’ Choice award for high-end, mid-tower gaming desktops. No problems here, Houston.
