Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN980 SFF PC Review - An Innovative VR-Ready Gaming Powerhouse
by Ganesh T S on August 25, 2016 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 EN980 with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom Prime95 + Furmark script, and noted the maximum sustained power consumption at the wall.
The presence of a 65W TDP CPU and a high-end discrete GPU with a TDP of around 180W, as well as the default BIOS configuration of 'Performance Boost' make the above idle and load power numbers plausible. The MAGNUS EN980 simply leaves other mini-PCs behing when it comes to gaming benchmarks. In terms of power consumption, it is the same scenario, but, it is to the detriment of the end user.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by four stages of different system loading profiles using the AIDA64 System Stability Test (each of 30 minutes duration). In the first stage, we stress the CPU, caches and RAM. In the second stage, we add the GPU to the above list. In the third stage, we stress the GPU standalone. In the final stage, we stress all the system components (including the disks). Beyond this, we leave the unit idle in order to determine how quickly the various temperatures in the system can come back to normal idling range. The various clocks, temperatures and power consumption numbers for the system during the above routine are presented in the graphs below.
We repeated the same observations with our legacy stress test using Prime95 and Furmark.
We can see from the frequency and temperature graphs that there is no thermal throttling at play. The fan speed also maxes out around 1800 RPM. The large fan diameter ensures that the noise profile remains acceptable.
Another interesting aspect to keep note of while evaluating mini-PCs is the chassis temperature. Using the Android version of the FLIR One thermal imager, we observed the chassis temperature after the CPU package temperature reached the steady state value in the above graph.
We have additional thermal images in the gallery below.
The chassis and internal temperatures do not show any reason for alarm.
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nathanddrews - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Revision 2.0 with Pascal and PCIe SSD should be interesting. The tiny design is really neat.Chaitanya - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
V2 with 1080 or 1070 has already been announced.nathanddrews - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
...ImSpartacus - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
That's going to be awesome. I hope they can cram some kaby lake in there as well as it'll surely have some minor improvements over Skylake.lament - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Not v2 though.. different model EN10: http://techreport.com/news/30526/zotac-magnus-en10...Morawka - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Tiny? this thing is huge. sure it's smaller than your typical M-ITX case but not far from it.Einy0 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Is it just me or is a 250GB SSD is not enough for a gaming PC. I thought it would be enough a few years ago and quickly discovered that I was constantly shuffling games over to a HDD to make room. Most of the games from the past few years are about 40GB a piece. Looking at my current Steam folder, the Witcher 3 is 38GB and Shadow of Mordor is 42GB. With Windows 10 and a standard load of common apps and utilities, you are looking at 4 to 5 games installed. I suppose if you only use it for games it would okay.jamyryals - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Looks like a terrific little box. The visual comparison to the Nuc was especially helpful to get size context. Too bad they couldn't get the Pascal cards in on this version.fallaha56 - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
too bad? deal breaker more like! no point being this far behind the curve...gtx1060 would wipe floor wit at every levelBrokenCrayons - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
It's an interesting system. As already mentioned in another comment, the NUC size comparison is useful for putting things in perspective about just how much more physical space it takes to gain gaming performance.I do question this line though:
"At this point of time, a premium gaming PC that can't be advertised as VR-ready can't get good market reception."
The monetary returns for companies producing VR hardware and VR-enabled software for consumer use isn't easy to find and we haven't had enough time or products out there to see any enduring trends about the latest round. All I've got is personal experience to work with here, but I see very little consumer demand because of the cost of entry and the unaddressed shortcomings that we saw with 90's era headgear being duplicated in current hardware.