The MSI PRO DP130 is just one of the latest pre-builts from the brand for business and productivity. It has a slightly larger 13L formfactor but is able to pack Intel 11th Generation Rocket Lake-S processors, up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, an entry-level dedicated GPU, and plenty of USB ports for expansion. In this review, the pre-built will be paired with an MSI PRO MP242P monitor to get an idea of the MSI PRO experience.
| Processor | Intel Core i7-11700, i5-11400, i3-10105, Pentium G6405 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, Intel UHD 750, Intel UHD 730, Intel UHD 630, Intel UHD 610 |
| Motherboard | Intel H510 |
| Memory | 2x DDR4 2666/3200MHz SO-DIMM, up to 64GB |
| Storage | 1x 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe, 1x 3.5-inch 1TB HDD |
| Connectivity | Intel WiFI 6E AX210, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2; Intel AC 3168, Dual-Band WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Front I/O | 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 2x USB 2.0 Type-A, 2x 3.5mm Audio Jacks |
| Rear I/O | 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 4x USB 2.0 Type-A, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x VGA, 1x PS/2, 1x COM, 1x RJ-45 Ethernet, 1x 3.5mm Audio Jack |
| PSU | 350W 80 Plus Bronze |
| OS | Windows 11 |
| Dimensions | 430.2 x 340 x 97mm |
| Weight | 4.53kg |
| Others | TPM Support, 13-Liter Chassis |
The MSI PRO DP130 comes with all the accessories you needed bundled plus a few extras. Inside its accessories box are its stand, manual, documentation, MSI marketing materials, a single 3.5-inch HDD bracket, an angled SATA cable, a full-sized wired keyboard, and a wired mouse.
The MSI PRO DP130 has a sleek chassis that measures 430.2 x 340 x 97mm. It’s thin and long, which should be able to fit most office spaces or home desks easily. It doesn’t have much in terms of design and only has the MSI logo at the front. Its minimalist design will be able to fit office spaces regardless of theme.
There is a mesh screen at the side while the top and bottom has perforations to aide with cooling. They don’t standout a lot and do not affect the streamlined look that the MSI PRO DP130 is going for.
Opening up the pre-built is as easy as removing three screws at the back and pulling out the side panel. There is wasted space in the chassis that MSI could have used to put more storage options or perhaps slim down the device even more.
The pre-built has a standard mATX motherboard with a standard blower-type cooler that should perform similarly as an Intel stock cooler for non-K processors. Its board has two RAM slots only populated with a single 16GB DDR4 3200MHz DIMM. Most users should be able to upgrade its RAM rather easily.
You can outfit the pre-built with a GT 1030 dedicated GPU but you can also put other cards on its PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. The selection of cards will be limited as the thin chassis prevents the usage of larger cards.
Power comes from an FSP350-50TAC 80 Plus Bronze TFX12V power supply. It’s pretty basic but it gets the job done. It is easily replaceable and you’ll only need to remove a few screws and cables to put in a similar-sized PSU.
The device comes with a 250GB WD SN530 NVMe M.2 SSD and a 3.5-inch 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD. You can replace the M.2 drive on your own and the chassis can accommodate another 3.5-inch drive. The PSU has two more SATA power connectors and the board itself has three SATA ports in reserve.
The MSI PRO DP130 has plenty of USB ports for the average user. At the front are two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, and two 3.5mm audio jacks for microphone and headphones.
At the back are two more USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports and an additional four USB 2.0 Type-A connections. Its rear I/O also comes with a DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, D-Sub, a PS/2 combo port for mouse and keyboard, an RJ-45 Ethernet port, and three 3.5mm audio jacks. At the bottom is a COM port if needed.
The pre-built comes with Windows 10 but can be upgraded to Windows 11 for those who want to since it does meet the minimum requirements and TPM 2.0. There is minimal bloatware on the device and only has the bare Windows essentials. There is a trial version of Norton Anti-Virus pre-installed but we expect some users to uninstall it as quickly as possible.
The MSI PRO DP130 that we have on test has an Intel Core i5-11400 processor paired with 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, which is fast enough for basic tasks such as office work and online schooling. There is no dedicated graphics with this particular model so we will be relying on the CPU’s Intel UHD 730 iGPU for graphics processing.
As mentioned earlier, primary storage of the pre-built is a WD SN530 NVMe SSD. It is fast to minimize boot times and load times on most tasks. Running a quick CrystalDiskMark test with a 1GiB workload reveals that the drive can do around 2491MB/s sequential reads and 970MB/s sequential writes. Not too bad from what can be considered an entry-level NVMe drive.
Now we move on to the main benchmarks of the MSI PRO DP130. Testing includes synthetic benchmarks, file compression and decompression, and rendering for the CPU. Meanwhile, its GPU will be tried with synthetic benchmarks and light gaming.
The MSI PRO DP130 does have the same Intel Core i5-11400 as the slimmer MSI PRO AP241 AIO but its larger form factor allows for better performance since the system can handle more power and heat. Single core performance of the pre-built is top notch while multi-core performance is decent across the board as well thanks to its 11th Generation Rocket Lake-S CPU.
Its Intel UHD 750 was not built for intensive gaming sessions. Rainbow Six Siege can run at 40fps at low settings at 1280 x 720 and under 30fps at 1920 x 1080p with the same settings. You can still play casual games or browser-based games seamlessly. Gaming performance can be boosted with a dedicated GPU but again, options are limited with the size and power capacity of the device.
As seen on the teardown, the MSI PRO DP130 cools its Intel Core i5-11400 something close to a stock heatsink and a few vents. Cooling performance is decent for a device not built for enthusiast tasks. Idle comfortable rests at 43°c while gaming simulated with Fire Strike loop is stable at 64°c. Rendering does take a toll on the CPU but remains below the 100°c threshold at 83°c.
Power consumption is also fairly low given that offices might use these for their workforce to keep electricity bills low. At idle or light workloads, the pre-built only uses around 31.88W of power and raises to 61.24W when the iGPU is used. Heavy workloads such as rendering will spike power usage to 176.68W.
For PhP 49,900 for its i5-11400 variant, the MSI PRO DP130 is a fairly solid pre-built for offices, businesses, and even home office workers. It is powerful enough for most tasks and the cooling is sufficient for short-burst heavier workloads.
There is some level of customizability when the pre-built is opened up. Users will be able to easily upgrade its RAM and storage with some tinkering. Some enthusiasts might even be able to up its PSU and add a dedicated GPU with some research and elbow grease.
Some might not like its plain and boxy design that might remind them older PC formfactors. There is also wasted space inside its chassis that might have been minimized if MSI has been just a bit smarter in laying out the pre-built.
Overall though, the MSI PRO DP130 is a good pre-built for businesses and offices to have. It has well-rounded specifications and a thin profile that can fit most spaces in rooms. It can also be upgrade with a bit of forethought to work around its space and power limitations. With all these reasons, we are giving it our seal of approval.
| Panel Size (Diagonal) | 23.8-inch, 16:9 |
| Panel Type | IPS, Anti-Glare Coating |
| True Resolution/Refresh Rate | 1920 x 1080, 75Hz |
| Color Gamut/Brightness | 99.1% sRGB, 250cd/m2 |
| Color Depth | 8-bit (6-bit + FRC) |
| Contrast Ratio | 1,000:1 |
| Viewing Angles | 178°(H) / 178°(V) |
| HDR | N/A |
| I/O Ports | 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x D-Sub, 1x Line-in, 1x Headphone-Out |
| VESA | 100 x 100 |
| Adjustment | Tilt -8° – 20°, Swivel -30° – 30°, Pivot -90° – 90°, Height 0 – 120mm |
| Audio | 2x 2W Speakers |
| Dimensions | 539.5 x 385.7 x 228.9mm |
| Weight | 4.49kg |
| Others | Kensington Lock |
The MSI PRO MP242P looks like a vanilla monitor that most offices have. This doesn’t make it distinct but some people might like the minimalist approach for an office especially when paired with a similarly themed desktop like the MSI PRO DP130 above.
At the front is a 23.8-inch 1920 x 1080 display with average bezels for 2021. While its look may be average, MSI has put a lot of ergonomic options on the PRO MP242P. It gets tilt, swivel, height, and pivot adjustments thanks to its stand. It even has the option to be used as a vertical monitor for secondary purposes in case you already have a primary display.
While it has a lot of ergonomic adjustments, there is no tactile click when set exactly in the middle. You may be left fiddling a lot with the monitor just to get exactly the correct central position.
The MSI PRO MP242P has a basic selection of ports at the back. Ports include an HDMI 1.4 port, VGA, and two 3.5mm audio jacks for audio and line-in. Not much out of ordinary here but we prefer if the display had a DisplayPort for additional connectivity.
All the MSI PRO MP242P’s controls are located at the back. Five buttons are here in total that controls power, menu, up and down, and quick input. It’s not as intuitive as joystick-based controls but it does the job.
Options on the on-screen display menu include the basics such as contrast, brightness, dynamic contrast ratio, overdrive, display position settings, OSD position settings, and color temperature. It also offers several presets including:
We suggest sticking to Standard mode is it is able to adjust contrast and brightness since other presets lock them out from being modified by the user.
MSI promises the PRO MP242P’s 23.8-inch panel can deliver 99.1% sRGB and 250cd/m2 of brightness. According to our measurements, the display can also produce 89.40% sRGB but has a higher maximum luminance of 264.69cd/m2. Color gamut is not too bad given it is still a budget-oriented monitor not designed for color accurate work. Check out our full readings below:
Brightness uniformity of the whole panel is acceptable but the center column is slightly dimmer compared to the left and right columns. This shouldn’t affect picture quality and user experience as the dip is barely noticeable unless measured with equipment.
By default, the panel has a slight tinge of red and even blues. Green is significantly lower compared to red and blue. We needed to raise green and lower red to get an even image for calibration. You can download the ICM calibration file for the MSI PRO MP242P here. Values for the adjustment are below:
Thanks to its IPS panel, the monitor has very little color shift when viewed on the sides but panel brightness does get slightly dimmer at the other side.
Some backlight bleed is expected from IPS displays. Bleed is only minimized to the upper left edge and bottom right edges of the screen. They are only noticeable in extremely dark scenes and while brightness is turned up to maximum.
Frame skipping can be detected as dropped frames or jerk while playing games. While the MSI PRO MP242P is not a gaming monitor by any measure, it does not have any observable frame skipping when assessed with BlurBuster’s Frame Skipping Test.
MSI does not list the response time for the PRO MP242P. Again, this feature is mostly geared for gamers but the monitor has a respectable 4.2ms MPRT on overdrive according to BlurBuster’s MPRT Test.
High power consumption might be a concern in large offices or consumers that spend a long time in front of a computer. Fortunately, power consumption of the monitor is rather low topping out at 16W at 100% brightness:
Priced at PhP 9,500, the MSI PRO MP242P might be a bit expensive for some for just an office monitor. It does have a good feature set including a wide color gamut, relatively high brightness, and low power consumption. Of course, the broad options of ergonomic options is a godsend for user comfort.
Contrast ratio is slightly low but color reproduction is palatable even on its default setting. The uniformity of the panel is fairly even throughout and there is minimal backlight bleed for an affordable IPS monitor.
The MSI PRO MP242P might not be the best budget monitor for the office but it is a step up from the drab office monitors. Those who are willing to upgrade their home office or business computing experience will be able to get some mileage with the display thanks to its solid feature set and performance.
The MSI PRO DP130 is now available in the Philippines for PhP 49,900. You can now get it via MSI concept stores and partner retails nationwide and on partner online stores.
The MSI PRO MP242P monitor is now available in the Philippines for PhP 9,500. You can now get it via MSI concept stores and partner retails nationwide and on partner online stores.
