Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 Review - A Gaming mini-PC Done Right
by Ganesh T S on September 28, 2015 8:00 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together. Despite consuming close to 19W at idle, the ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 actually happens to be the PC with the lowest idle power amongst all the discrete GPU-equipped machines that we have evaluated so far.
The load power is also amongst the highest in the set of numbers that we have seen till now. However, the big separation between the idle and load powers indicate that the sytem can operate efficiently over a wide range of loading conditions.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by 30 minutes of pure CPU loading. This is followed by another 30 minutes of both CPU and GPU being loaded simultaneously. After this, the CPU load gets removed, allowing the GPU to be loaded alone for another 30 minutes. The various clocks in the system as well as the temperatures within the unit are presented below.
According to Intel's official specifications, the junction temperature of the Core i5-5200U is 105C. We find that pure CPU loading keeps the clock frequency half-way between the base frequency (2.2 GHz) and the maximum burst frequency (2.7 GHz). However, the temperature remains well below the junction temperature (around 82C). Getting the GPU into the equation ramps up the motherboard temperature as well as that of the GPU and GPU. However, the CPU remains below the junction temperature despite going up to as high as 102C. The GPU stabilizes around 81C.
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aj654987 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
It would perform better with a 35 or 45 watt haswell desktop processor but they probably went U series because it also takes up less space being soldered on the motherboard and significantly less heat at 15 watt. So its all a trade off.Rick540 - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link
Why not just buy a decent laptop for that price and connect it to your TV? Then you'd have a laptop to carry around when you need it. Looks like all that is anyway is a laptop in a computer case.Teknobug - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Exactly, for nearly $1000 you can get a good laptop that can be used anywhere and still be hooked to the TV or monitor with keyboard/mouse as your main PC if you want, and most laptops around that pricetag has an i7 or high end i5 processor rather than the moderate performing U variant.CknSalad - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Hopefully zotac releases a 35/45w skylake cpu. I really don't like the i5-5200U cpu that comes with it. If it had a 35/45w skylake cpu, this would be a really good portable PC.Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Huh. HUH. So really this is sort of like Alienware's Alpha? But with a better GPU and worse CPU? And similarly has a user replaceable hard drive slot and RAM?This thing looks very very interesting as a possible notebook replacement for me in the future. Cheaper than the equivalent power in a notebook, I think. Hmm...
Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I'd like a quad CPU though...stick a 45 watt CPU in something like this and we'd be in business...I mean make it bigger if need be, I don't care...Haravikk - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
What's the idea behind the 4x HDMI ports on this? The article and specs don't mention any as being inputs (which would be handy for passthrough) so why so many outputs? I could understand two as it would give the option of having one for video and one for audio, or for two screens, but are there many people planning to run four screens off of a box like this?It seems decent enough, but still far too expensive for what you get IMO, even accounting for the small size.
mikato - Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - link
This isn't quite what I'm going for but I do like seeing more of these mini PCs. Keeping them coming!Here's what I want:
-Mini PC that normally sits by my TV for HTPC purposes, but is dead simple to bring to a friend's house
-HDMI, DisplayPort
-Integrated graphics on CPU - no discrete wanted since this will not be used for heavy gaming, only light gaming. AMD APUs fit the bill with stronger CPU than this for faster multipurpose usage and plenty strong graphics for any kind of video playing, streaming, light gaming. Also price is decent.
-Big hard disk (I like SSDs better too, but I want to chuck all my media on this thing so I can bring it anywhere, and play it on anybody's TV. I probably won't bother trying to use a small SSD for OS like I do in my other machines.)
-quiet (duh)
-power efficient (duh)
-midrange laptop price? I'm willing to build my own if there is a nice mini PC case around.
-Not required- Bluray/DVD - Like this Zotac box, I decided to not require this since support on computers is bad. Windows removed it (I think). OS X didn't have it. You can't make HD Blurays of your own videos that actually play (basically). So I'll just stick with media files and streaming... and I do have a Bluray player anyway. It would be sweet to include it and consolidate one more living room item, but no biggie.