HTPC Credentials

Despite being actively cooled, I was pleasantly surprised by the noise profile of the system. The fans have variable rotational speeds, and in general, for most media related activities, the fan noise is minimal. I would go as far to say that the noise is probably the lowest amongst all the gaming mini-PCs that we have evaluated.

Refresh Rate Accurancy

Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy. The most important refresh rate for videophiles is obviously 23.976 Hz (the 23 Hz setting). The Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 does not have the same out-of-the-box accuracy possessed by Intel and AMD. However, NVIDIA also allows for setting custom resolutions and refresh rates.

The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.

Network Streaming Efficiency

Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 720p encoding. Since YouTube now defaults to HTML5 for video playback, we have stopped evaluating Adobe Flash acceleration. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream in Mozilla Firefox (v 41.0).

YouTube Streaming - HTML5: Power Consumption

GPU load and VPU load were around 16.01% and 21.42% for the YouTube HTML5 stream.GPU load in the steady state for the Netflix streaming case was 5.88% and the VPU load was 4.36%.

Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 8.1 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here.

Netflix Streaming - Windows 8.1 Metro App: Power Consumption

Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks

In order to evaluate local file playback, we concentrate on EVR-CP and madVR. We already know that EVR works quite well even with the Intel IGP for our test streams.

In our earlier reviews, we focused on presenting the GPU loading and power consumption at the wall in a table (with problematic streams in bold). Starting with the Broadwell NUC review, we decided to represent the GPU load and power consumption in a graph with dual Y-axes. Nine different test streams of 90 seconds each were played back with a gap of 30 seconds between each of them. The characteristics of each stream are annotated at the bottom of the graph. Note that the GPU usage is graphed in red and needs to be considered against the left axis, while the at-wall power consumption is graphed in green and needs to be considered against the right axis.

Frame drops are evident whenever the GPU load consistently stays above the 85 - 90% mark. An important aspect to note here for NVIDIA GPUs is that the load reported doesn't take into account the GPU clock. For example, the 4Kp30 clip in the EVR-CP mode: Initially, the GPU and VPU operate at higher clocks, resulting in the reported load being 7 - 8% and the power consumption being around 34W. However, later on towards the end of the stream, the load jumps up to around 12%, but the power consumption is now only around 25 W. Essentially, the power consumption at the wall is the real metric of efficiency for decode and playback. As long as the GPU load stays below the 85 - 90% mark, frame drops don't occur.

EVR-CP and madVR Defaults don't present any challenges to the GTX 960

Since the GTX 960 is a powerful GPU, we evaluated madVR with both default and stress settings. The 'madVR stress settings' was configured with the upscaling algorithms set to Jinc 3-tap with anti-ringing activated and the downscaling algorithm set to Lanczos 3-tap, again with anti-ringing activated.

The ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 was able to handle the madVR stress configuration without any issues.

Moving on to codec support, the GTX 970M / GM204 is a known quantity with regards to the scope of supported hardware accelerated codecs.

There is no HEVC_VLD_Main10 support. This is a bit disappointing since the real desktop GTX 960 supports Main10 decoding in hardware. Other than that aspect, the ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 actually makes for a reasonably power-efficient madVR-capable HTPC.

Networking and Storage Performance Power Consumption and Thermal Performance
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  • BrokenCrayons - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    Yeah, I'm kind of curious to see how the cooling is configured too and slightly worried about the 102 degree maximum CPU temp. Yes, I get that Intel says everything is awesome up to 105, but there's not much room to wiggle before the poor little processor has to back off which will probably happen as the computer ages and collects some dust in the HSF or if it operates in warmer ambient air. I'd be happy to see it get a good 5-10mm thicker for a cooler running processor with more tolerance for those naughty dust bunnies to build up a little.
  • QinX - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    Addendum:
    Also please add the dimension of the device, I can't find them anywhere and although I can go an pixel measure it, having either physical measurements of manufacturer measurements is nice for visualizing size.
  • donthatethesun - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    I was curious about the dimensions too. Found them on ZOTAC's website:

    L 8.27" (210mm) x W 7.99" (203mm) x H 2.07" (52.5mm)
  • meacupla - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

    2.23L, which makes it smaller and better equipped than Asus GR8/GR6 (2.5L).
  • Meaker10 - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

    Look at the backplates for the heatsinks, it's soldered on like the CPU.

    A proper gaming mini PC would use an MXM slot.
  • milkod2001 - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    One could buy a laptop with the same specs and have extra portability or full desktop PC coming in small case ( mITX board, Full desktop Intel Quad Core and full 980 GTX all giving 3x better performance ) for $1000 easily. Why would anyone wanted to buy this crappy laptop with no screen or keyboard?

    I could understand the purpose of these machines as super cheap $200-350 office /streaming devices but at $1000 there is zero value in them.
  • firewall597 - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    Seems like an amazing gaming solution for your living room to me...
  • testbug00 - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link

    huh? You need a 970m laptop starting at around 1300-1350 currently....
  • Calista - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

    Having looked at machines both similar to this Zotac and gaming laptops I tend to agree. Mini PC:s when looking at a pure value perspective seem to have a hard time competing. Which is obviously why they are still a niche segment.

    The Magnus in my country is $1150, while the MSIGE72 is $1350. The extra $200 for the laptop will give me the same GPU but a much faster quad core i7, 16GB instead of 8GB or RAM and not only a 128GB SSD but also a 1000GB HDD. It will of course also be easily portable and can be used as a laptop. The only problem is the slightly larger size, but since it's flat it can fit in most places.

    And if dropping down to a GTX 960M it's actually $100 cheaper to buy a laptop with otherwise similar components as the Zotac, but with a slightly faster CPU.
  • Calista - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

    What we need is a new standard for mini components. At the moment it's a huge delta between a mITX-build and these mini machines. We have in a nutshell a situation in where one size is fit for a system in the 50-100 watt range, another standard (mITX) which could deal with 500 watt of components without overheating or unbearable noise. At the same time a proper gaming system with few compromises seem to demand something in the 200 watt range, i.e. a quad core CPU and a GTX 960 or similar.

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