MSI PRO DP21 PDP2114MQ006 Black

The MSI PRO DP21 is a tiny desktop with a surprisingly powerful 14-core i5, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It's built for office work and productivity, not gaming, and the integrated graphics reflect that. Port selection is excellent, and Windows 11 Pro is a nice inclusion for business users. Just watch out for wild price swings across vendors and don't expect to play anything more demanding than Solitaire.

The i5-14500 sits in the 68th percentile for CPUs in our database, which puts it solidly in "well above average" territory for a mini PC. You're getting 14 cores (6 performance, 8 efficiency) and 20 threads, with a boost clock up to 5GHz. In practice, that means snappy application launches, smooth multitasking, and enough headroom for light content creation. The 16GB of DDR5 RAM is about average for this class, landing in the 48th percentile. It's enough for most office workflows, but power users running VMs or heavy datasets might feel the ceiling.

Storage is a 1TB NVMe SSD, which clocks in at the 65th percentile. That's a respectable amount of fast storage for a machine this size. Boot times are near-instant, and you've got room for a decent local file stash before you need to lean on the cloud or an external drive. The port selection is actually a standout here, hitting the 79th percentile. You get DisplayPort, HDMI 2.0b, a USB-C port, and a frankly generous seven USB-A ports. That's more than some full towers we've tested. Wi-Fi 6E and Ethernet round out a connectivity package that punches above the DP21's weight class.

Stacked against the Dell Tower ECT1250, the MSI takes a different approach entirely. The Dell is a traditional tower with room for upgrades and likely a discrete GPU option, while the DP21 is all about saving space. If you need a small footprint and don't care about gaming, the MSI wins on desk real estate alone. But the Dell probably offers better long-term reliability and expandability, which matters if you're planning to keep this machine for five years.

The Apple Mac Studio M4 Max is in a different league performance-wise, but it's also a different operating system and a much higher price bracket. If you're locked into Windows and business software, the MSI makes more sense. The Lenovo Legion Tower 5i and HP OMEN GT22 are gaming-focused towers that will absolutely smoke the DP21 in any 3D workload, but they're massive by comparison and overkill for spreadsheets. The CLX SET is a custom builder option that offers more flexibility but less warranty support. For pure office productivity in a tiny box, the DP21 holds its own against these bigger machines by simply not trying to compete on their terms.

Pricing on this thing is all over the map. We're seeing a spread of over $15,000 across vendors, which is frankly ridiculous for a mini PC. The low end around $1199 feels about right for the specs, a 14th-gen i5, 16GB of DDR5, and a 1TB SSD in a compact chassis with Windows 11 Pro. That's competitive with similar mini PCs from Dell and Lenovo. But some retailers are listing this at nearly $17,000, which is either a typo or someone hoping to catch a corporate purchasing department asleep at the wheel.

At the $1200 mark, you're getting solid value for a business-focused mini desktop. The vPro support alone is worth a premium for IT departments that need remote management. Just make sure you're not accidentally paying five figures for what should be a four-figure machine. Shop around and double-check that cart total before you click buy.

The MSI PRO DP21 is one of those little boxes that makes you do a double take. It's tiny, it's quiet, and it's packing a proper 14th-gen Intel Core i5 with vPro. This isn't some Celeron-powered nettop from a decade ago. It's a real desktop shrunk down to something you can mount behind a monitor and forget about. MSI is clearly aiming this at offices, digital signage, and anyone who needs a no-nonsense Windows machine that doesn't eat up desk space.

We've seen a lot of mini PCs come through our database, and the DP21 carves out a specific niche. With a 67 out of 100 for compact use and a 61.8 for home office, it knows exactly what it is. The i5-14500 is a 14-core chip that handles spreadsheets, browser tabs, and multitasking without breaking a sweat. And you get Windows 11 Pro out of the box, which matters if you're joining a domain or need BitLocker. No Home edition upgrade shenanigans here.

But let's be real about that 8.4 out of 100 gaming score. The integrated UHD 770 graphics are fine for pushing pixels on a couple of 4K displays, but they're not touching modern games. If you're looking for a tiny gaming rig, this ain't it. This is a workhorse for productivity, not play. And that's totally fine, as long as you know what you're signing up for.

Gamers should look elsewhere, period. The UHD 770 integrated graphics land in the 12th percentile of our GPU database, which is frankly abysmal for anything beyond desktop compositing and video playback. Even older titles will struggle at reasonable settings. If you want a small form factor machine that can game, check out something like an Intel NUC with discrete graphics or a Zotac ZBOX Magnus. You'll pay more, but you'll actually be able to run games.

Content creators working with 3D rendering or video editing should also think twice. The CPU is capable, but the lack of a dedicated GPU will bottleneck any CUDA or OpenCL accelerated workloads. A machine with even an entry-level RTX card will run circles around this for rendering. And if reliability is a top concern, the 37th percentile score gives us pause. For mission-critical deployments where downtime isn't an option, you might want to look at Dell or HP business lines with better track records and on-site service options.

If you're kitting out an office, running digital signage, or just want a capable Windows machine that disappears behind your monitor, the DP21 is a strong pick. The i5-14500 chews through productivity tasks, the port selection is genuinely impressive, and Windows 11 Pro means it'll slot right into a business environment without extra licensing headaches. Just make sure you're paying somewhere around that $1200 mark and not the absurd upper end of the pricing spectrum.

For home users who want a general-purpose family computer, this is also a solid choice, provided no one's trying to play games on it. The integrated graphics are the Achilles' heel here, and there's no way around that. If anyone in the house has gaming ambitions, you'll need to look at something with a discrete GPU, even a low-end one. But for email, web browsing, streaming, and office apps, the DP21 is quiet, compact, and more than capable.