MSI Aegis Ti3

Mean machine makes a mega impression

- Bo Moore

We’ve taken to calling the Aegis Ti3 “Optimus Prime” around the office, though perhaps “Megatron” is more appropriate. With angular features and red and black styling, the Aegis Ti3 looks more Decepticon than Autobot, but we can’t hold that against it—especially considering the power locked inside.

The Ti3 marks the third generation of MSI’s Aegis gaming desktops, and this iteration updates the system with an Intel Kaby Lake processor—a 4.2GHz Core i7-7700K, with the turbo raised from 4.5 to 4.8GHz. Also slotted in the MSI Z270 motherboard is a ludicrous 64GB of DDR42400 RAM—an absurd amount that’s more than enough for any pile of tasks you might have in mind. The result is solid scores in Cine bench R15 (1,032) and Tech ARP’s x264 (23.22fps), though that latter number comes with a caveat, because x264 crashed the first few times we tried running it. Apparently, the factory CPU bump was only done to the clock speed, not the voltage, resulting in some instability under heavy load. It was only after bumping the voltage up a tad that the test completed without a hitch.