MSI PRO DP21 PRODP2113M499

The MSI PRO DP21 crams a fast desktop i7 into a tiny box with a ridiculous number of ports. The 8GB of RAM is a major bottleneck that you'll want to fix immediately, and the integrated graphics mean gaming is out of the question. It's a great little office workhorse if you buy it at a sane price and budget for a memory upgrade.

That i7-13700 is the star of the show, landing in the 75th percentile for CPUs. It chews through office workloads and multitasking without breaking a sweat, and the 500GB NVMe SSD keeps boot times and app launches snappy. But the 8GB of single-channel DDR4 is a real bottleneck, sitting all the way down in the 10th percentile. You'll feel that pinch the moment you open more than a dozen browser tabs. The integrated Intel UHD 770 graphics are fine for driving a couple of displays, but they're a weak spot for anything visual, landing in the 35th percentile. This machine is a productivity workhorse with a limp, and that limp is the RAM.

Stacked against something like the Lenovo Legion Tower 5a, the MSI gets absolutely demolished in graphics and gaming, but it's not even playing the same sport. The Legion is a gaming rig, and this is a business mini PC. A more direct comparison is the Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, which runs circles around the MSI in GPU tasks and efficiency but costs several times more. The HP OMEN and Acer Nitro are also in a different league for gaming. Where the MSI wins is sheer port density and a low entry price for a powerful Intel CPU in a tiny box. It's a niche champion for office warriors who need a dozen USB devices connected at once.

Pricing on this model is all over the map, with a spread of nearly $24,700 across vendors, which is frankly absurd. The real-world price from reputable sellers like Newegg should land well under $800. At that price, you're paying for the CPU and the form factor, and you're getting a solid deal on both. Just know that you'll need to spend another $30-50 on an extra stick of RAM to unlock its true potential. If you see it listed for anything close to that $25,490 outlier, close the tab and walk away. That's not a price, that's a typo.

MSI stuffed a full desktop i7-13700 into a 1.27kg box and called it the PRO DP21. That's the headline here. You're getting a 16-core chip in a chassis that barely takes up more space than a thick book, and the port selection is frankly ridiculous for something this small. But the rest of the spec sheet reads like MSI spent the entire budget on the CPU and forgot about everything else. 8GB of RAM in a machine with this processor is like putting economy tires on a sports car. It'll get you there, but you're leaving a ton of potential on the table.

This is a business machine through and through, and our scoring backs that up. It pulls a 61.1 overall, with home office and business use cases hovering around 58. The gaming score is a brutal 9.3 out of 100, so don't even think about firing up anything more demanding than Solitaire. If you need a tiny, quiet box for spreadsheets, Zoom calls, and a frankly absurd number of USB devices, this thing has your name on it. Just budget for a RAM upgrade on day one.

Gamers and content creators should look elsewhere immediately. The integrated Intel UHD 770 graphics are a dead end for anything beyond basic photo editing or video streaming. If you need a machine for 3D modeling, video rendering, or playing any modern game at a decent framerate, this is not the droid you're looking for. A tower with a dedicated GPU will serve you infinitely better.

The MSI PRO DP21 is for someone who needs a small, quiet, and surprisingly powerful office PC and doesn't mind cracking it open to add more RAM. It's a fantastic little brain for a desk setup that's drowning in peripherals. Buy it for the CPU and the port selection, not for the out-of-the-box experience. If you're willing to spend 10 minutes and a few extra bucks on a RAM upgrade, you'll have a mini powerhouse that'll handle work for years.