Velocity Micro Raptor ES40 review

pcgamer.com:

I love a mini PC. There is something so compelling and utterly satisfying about a gaming PC with the power of a massive tower condensed into something with a footprint not much larger than a shoebox. That's what Velocity Micro is offering with its Raptor ES40 gaming PC; a compact system that can travel with you as a jobbing professional gamer or just someone who might be moving around more than most. Or should you just prefer something that doesn't dominate your desktop like a full tower, but allows you to dominate in the latest games.

But, y'know, if you do want to travel with it, it even comes with a carry handle. Yes, the custom Velocity Micro NX2 mini-ITX chassis comes with its own pop-out carry handle, which definitely feels robust enough to support its weight. But, let's be honest, that's just a thing you're going to find yourself fiddling around with (handle goes up, handle goes down) more than actually using on the reg.

The chassis itself actually feels very Lian-Li, all black brushed aluminium and clean lines, but mercifully without the machined edges that I always end up shredding my fingers on with Lian-Li cases. Its tool-less design means you can pull both the solid and tempered glass side panels off with ease and the simple layout makes it easy to get access to the insides for upgrades, etc.

There's also a maybe surprising amount of space inside for your graphics card, too. I did try to get an RTX 4090 in there, but that was a little over-ambitious. I reckon you could just squeeze one in there if you removed the front 120 mm fan first, but suffice to say you'll be able to get cards under 300 mm in length into this system when it does come to a GPU upgrade.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
Motherboard: Gigabyte A620I
RAM: 32 GB (2x 16 GB) DDR5-5200
GPU: Asus RTX 4070 Super Dual
Storage: 2 TB Crucial P3 Plus
PSU: EVGA 750 W SFX
Chassis: Velocity Micro NX2
Price: $2,519

But what I've gone in there in my review machine, however, is already something fairly spicy, and