Physical Teardown

To get inside the MSI Aegis Ti, you have to remove a screw and slide the top latch down and the bottom latch up. The screw prevents the latch from moving while carrying the PC around, which is another nice touch. Opening the left side reveals the installed VGAs and gives access to the third and fourth DIMM slots and the M.2 ports.


The right side presents a spot for an SSD up top, while the bottom... uh... where's the motherboard! Removing the plastic thing at the bottom reveals the board itself. The plastic tray holds the CPU cooler right at the edge to help ensure warm air from the CPU gets exhausted out of the case as soon as possible.


Removing the louvers at the top of the case reveals the metal case top. Removing five screws releases the top, which flips open to give you full access to the VGAs.


However, because of the smallish depth of the case, the power wires for the VGAs are hidden at first, but you can slide the front I/O assembly forward, which then provides easy access to the power plugs and large MSI GAMING VGAs that came pre-installed with my unit.


Removing the VGAs reveals yet more thoughtful design cues; clips are holding wires in place and there is a thermal probe between the VGAs to control the intake fan for the GPU area. No overheating GPUs here!


If you choose to use M.2 SSDs, you can put them in RAID. MSI placed dual OEM Samsung 950 PRO drives into my test unit. They also included dual 16 GB SO-DIMMs for me, providing a total of 32 GB of 2400 MHz RAM here (the board does support XMP). I could buy two more sticks of the same memory and install them next to the M.2 drives for a total of 64 GB of RAM!


Where are the mechanical drives, you ask? Hidden in the base! Remove two screws, slide off the cover, and the cage for 3.5-inch devices is revealed. Cabling for another drive is already in place, so you simply need to mount the drive to the tray, slide it into place, and plug it in.


My test system includes MSI's HB SLI bridge, but not all builds will feature one. I did talk to MSI about this and they mentioned that they plan to include a HB bridge with all future SLI-capable PCs like this one. If you buy this case as a barebones or have it pre-built for you, make sure you ask for one to be installed, especially if pushing 4K or VR. This bridge will affect FPS a little bit, but also helps with micro-stutter thanks to its added available bandwidth, and micro-stutter is something I am personally very sensitive to. You do need a very expensive FCAT system to measure such problems, but my eyes can do it too. :P