Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 Review - A Gaming mini-PC Done Right
by Ganesh T S on September 28, 2015 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 provided us with the opportunity to take a look at what mobile Maxwell coupled with a Broadwell-U CPU could bring to the gaming mini-PC market. Simply put, this is the most powerful mini-PC we have evaluated so far for gaming workloads.
There are certain things that prospective consumers need to keep in mind. The M.2 slot in the unit supports only PCIe x2 devices and not x4 ones such as the Samsung SM951. The discrete GPU drives up the idle power, meaning that one can't have the cake and eat it too. It would be nice to have something similar to what is done in the notebook space to be implemented here - i.e, being able to use the integrated GPU as well when not gaming, or when attempting to use Quick Sync. Finally, we would like to see a higher performance CPU in the system - there are other CPUs at this TDP worth considering.
One of the aspects for which Zotac can't be blamed directly is the advertising of the NVIDIA GTX 970M as GTX 960 when they are completely different for HTPC uses. NVIDIA's rebranding scheme makes very little sense, at least in this situation. The 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960' in the ZOTAC ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 is a MXM card, and as such, can't be purchased standalone. As an OEM exclusive, it is only available in pre-built systems like the MAGNUS EN970. Despite being placed in a SFF system, the GTX 970M can provide roughly the same performance as that of a bonafide desktop GTX 960 - just not for HTPC workloads.
Excellent thermal design and a robust cooling mechanism make the MAGNUS EN970 one of the quietest gaming mini-PCs that we evaluated. To provide some rough numbers, a HTC One M7 running the Android Sound Meter Pro app recorded just 50 dB when placed directly outside the outlet vent during the benchmarking of GRID Autosport. With the GB-BXi5G-760, we recorded 65 dB under similar circumstances. During gameplay, or even 5 - 6 ft. away, the noise profile of the unit is simply not a concern at all.
The barebones version of the ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 is available for $800 on Amazon. For $100 extra, the PLUS version adds a 120GB SATA SSD and an 8GB SO-DIMM. The pricing is quite reasonable when the costs of the competing products are considered. On the whole, the plus points of the ZOTAC ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 far outweigh the issues. There is still scope for improvement that we have pointed out in this review, but it still makes an interesting mini-PC purchase.
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KateH - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
I would be very curious to hear more about the GPU rebranding situation... why would a 1280-shader GM204 on an MXM card be a 970m in a laptop but a 960 non-M in a SFF? Why would Nvidia/Zotac go to the trouble of editing the VGA BIOS and drivers to make this GM204 show up as a 960 when there are already loads of MXM 970m's that are functionally identical to this aside from re-badging? The OEM GPU re-branding situation is ridiculous; Zotac/Nvidia have created a doubly confusing situation where this card could be easily confused for either a significantly-slower GM107-based GTX 960m (that's itself a rebadged 860m) or a slightly-slower GM206 GTX 960 that has the potentially-important HEVC decode that's actually not present in this "960".KateH - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
And while I'm on a rant, re-badging between generations is ridiculous too- but I know by now that's a losing battle that's only getting worse. FFS.mapesdhs - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
A lot of that going on by all sides, but it's hard to discuss without enraging rival armies of haters and fanboys. We'd be a lot better off if nobody did it. What really bugs me is the massive performance overlap of newer lesser models vs. older models. The naming system allows one to infer that a newer card will have a particular level of basic performance, but the reality is often very different. I benchmarked a 650 Ti recently, was amazed to find it often failed to beat an old GTX 460.lmcd - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
I mean the 650 Ti should be like 2/3 the power consumption at most, no?KateH - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Yeah, something like that. ~100-120W for a 650Ti vs ~150-170W for a 460. The 660 is in the same power envelope as the 460 and should outperform it by a fair marginrtho782 - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
You're perfectly right. Having a separate mobile product stack made sense when mobile gpus were way behind desktop ones, now they use the same silicon, less so.I think we should have the same product names and tiers for both, perhaps use the "m" suffix in cases where the clockspeed is much lower in the laptop variant.
KateH - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
I kinda wonder if it's not time to do away with the "M" suffix for GPUs altogether and move towards segmentation based on power, like what Intel has done with their K/S/H/Y/U suffixes. Low-power MXM/onboard GPUs are by no means strictly in the realm of notebooks anymore- AIO and SFF computers are using them more and more. And looking at AMD/NV's product stacks, "desktop" GPUs cover ~15W-250W (with all but the top-end being under ~150W) and "mobile" GPUs cover ~15W-125W- that's a whole lot of overlap.ruthan - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Better than Macmin, but otherwise is better build own, even if MXM is not possible to use by us second category people..adithyay328 - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
Those specs actually almost give my mid tower desktop a run for it's money-almost.aj654987 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Well, for the alienware alpha with the 860m and the T series processors (Haswell 35W), the CPU's are almost all GPU limited, even the i3's. So there is room for a higher powered GPU.With going broadwell, the lowest desktop CPU is 65 watts so far, which is probably too high for that small case, so their only choice is a 15 watt mobile chip.