Review: MSI Vision Elite RS Gaming Desktop

If the MSI Vision Elite RS could walk, it would walk into every room like it owned the place. It’s got attitude, it’s got flair, and it’s got the horsepower to back it up. It’s also got a price to match. If you’re looking for a desktop gaming PC to last for years, but still leave room for upgrades, this one is a strong contender.

The Vision Elite boasts powerful hardware, but a spec sheet doesn't tell the full story. This desktop's gorgeous curved glass panel houses a spacious interior, lit up with a cornucopia of RGB LEDs. While there are other curved glass cases on the market, most either use multiple glass panels to achieve the effect or add distracting button panels. MSI's approach is minimalist, drawing focus directly to the internals. It's not just a desktop. It's a statement piece.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

Under the hood, the unit I tested comes with an Intel Core i9 14900KF CPU, 64 GB of DDR5 RAM, and the beastly Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics card. In terms of storage, there's a 2-terabyte M.2 NVMe solid-state drive, with an extra slot for another M.2 SSD, plus four SATA 6G ports, giving you plenty of options to expand storage in the future.

As someone who’s been upgrading the same PC for 20 years, this thing ticks all my boxes for a prebuilt gaming PC. It’s powerful out of the box, has style that’s hard to replicate with off-the-shelf parts, and plenty of room to grow over the years.

Flourish and Flair

As soon as I turn on the Vision Elite RS, it commands attention from anyone in the room. The curved glass panel encompasses two sides of the PC, giving it almost an aquarium look. I half-expected to see exotic fish swimming around inside this thing. The striking RGB LEDs are crammed into every corner of the rig, with two rows of three RGB-laced fans along the side and top of the device, with a seventh light-up fan on the rear. The CPU uses a 360-millimeter liquid cooling system, but these fans still help ensure the system stays cool.

All the RGB lighting is a bit much. I wouldn’t recommend putting this thing in any room where people are likely to sleep or want to relax and watch TV unless you switch the lighting off. However, with a little tweaking to turn down the impact, it’s easily one of the most eye-catching PCs I’ve ever used.

It’s slick, eschewing the angular, edgy Gamer Aesthetic, and its open design makes it feel like it takes up less space than it does. This is particularly helpful since the Vision Elite RS is huge. At nearly 50 pounds, it’s a monster to lug around, so wherever you put it in your home, you’re probably going to want it to stay there.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

The tempered glass panel is designed to avoid shattering if it gets damaged. The first unit I received was damaged in transit and the glass was broken when I opened the box. While I don't love what this says about how it was packaged, I can't rule out this being a shipping issue. Yet, despite what seemed like a rather severe impact directly in the middle of the glass, the panel held its shape and there weren't any major shards loose in the vinyl bag it came in.

Power Overwhelming

A pretty case doesn’t matter as much as a rig that can perform, and fortunately, the Vision Elite can handle just about anything I throw at it. While playing Overwatch 2, I sustained over 300 frames per second at 1,440-pixel resolution, cranking that up to 500 fps when set to 1,080p. I’ve been simultaneously testing the Samsung Odyssey G6 gaming monitor, and even that luxurious monitor caps out at a 360-Hz refresh rate. In other words, I literally can’t handle how many frames this desktop can put out.

The more graphics-intensive Cyberpunk 2077 achieved over 100 fps on even the highest, ray-tracing-enabled settings. Starfield struggled a bit more on Ultra, peaking at over 80 fps, but that was still plenty to feel comfortable in both games. Dropping the settings in both games resulted in better frame rates, but honestly, if I’m going to play on a gaming rig that costs more than $4,000, I’ll be pretty grouchy about turning down my settings in any game if I don’t have to. What I like about the Vision Elite RS is that I don’t have to.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

The Vision Elite doesn't come overclocked out of the box, but MSI makes it pretty easy to do this in the MSI Center app. The PC is mostly free of bloatware. Instead, MSI Center gives you quick links to download any of the company's utilities you might want, like Mystic Light for RGB control. After trying other laptops and desktops that come preloaded with too much bloat, it was nice to find one that showed some restraint.

Future Proof

Maybe it’s my legacy as a PC builder, but no matter how powerful a gaming rig is, I can’t bring myself to buy it if it’s not easy to upgrade. The MSI Vision Elite RS meets my expectations. Having enough space for the abnormally huge RTX 4090 already means it’s got plenty of physical space for large graphics cards going forward, so that’s a plus.

The motherboard has four PCI-E x16 slots, though it’s worth noting that the RTX 4090 either uses or blocks all of them. There’s also an extra M.2 slot directly on the motherboard, so you can add a second SSD without getting a full PCI-E card for it. Between that and the two extra PCI-E x1 slots, there should be plenty of room for expansion and the blocked PCI-E x16 slots aren’t a huge issue, but it’s still worth being aware of.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

The 64 GB of RAM also conveniently only takes up two of the four slots for memory on the MSI Pro Z790 Wi-Fi motherboard. This would be plenty for any gaming rig, and even enough for most video editors working on 6K RAW footage, but this board supports up to a theoretical maximum of 256 GB of RAM. And since it ships with two free slots, it's trivially easy to add more in the future.

Underneath the motherboard is a removable panel that provides access to cable management as well as a pair of internal drive bays where you can add SATA-controlled storage. The panel snaps off without the need for thumbscrews, which is incredibly convenient. The out-of-the-box cable management situation is clean and impressive, and there's plenty of space to keep it that way well into the future. This machine is powerful enough that I wouldn’t expect to need upgrades anytime soon, but when that time comes, I’d feel comfortable with my options for swapping out parts here.

That’s a huge comfort given how hard it is to get over the sticker shock. At $4,300 for the RTX 4090 model, it's expensive. Something that costs this much ought to last a long time, and the Vision Elite is set up for success. On paper, the MSI Vision Elite RS stands among the highest-end gaming PCs, going up against the likes of the Corsair Vengeance i7500 and the Maingear MG-1 Ultimate (which is a beefier version of the MG-1 Silver I liked). You can even save a bit of money by going with something like the MG-1 Ultimate if all you're concerned with is specs.

In a lineup, however, the Vision Elite stands out. It's just gorgeous. It's the difference between seeing someone in an off-the-rack suit, versus a well-tailored one. Beauty might come at a price, but this one is worth it.