Gadgetory

building a fairly compact super-powerful system with like a gtx 980 in a mini ITX case is kind of fashionable right now but there's a whole other class of machine that's smaller than what can be built using off-the-shelf components the issue is that with these systems you get less customizability and in some cases like we experienced with this really small gigabyte bricks micro pc heat management can be a real problem if desktop-class GPUs are integrated into such a design so ZOTAC is taking a bit of a middle ground approach with their new ZBOX Magnus en 970 compact gaming desktop at only about 20 centimetres long and wide and about five centimetres tall it's small but not so small that it seems like it all melt the minute you fire up battlefront but does it hold up I guess we'll find out if you already know about Luke rate go sign up for the October crate at the link in the video description if you don't stick around till the end of the video to check out our unboxing of the September summon crate with items from Pokemon and hearthstone so let's start with a look at the Magnus's specs at the heart of this tiny PC is an Intel Core i5 5200 u processor running at 2.2 gigahertz for the turbo boost speed of up to 2.7 gigahertz for graphics you get a desktop class nvidia geforce gtx 960 with 3 gigabytes of gddr5 vram and well ok you don't get a whole lot else this is a bare-bones kit meaning that you get no storage no RAM and no operating system included but it's got two two and a half inch SATA 3 6 gigabit per second base and an MDOT 2 slot for RAM you will need laptop style sodium memory it's got 2 memory slots with official support for up to 16 gigabytes of RAM although we were able to install 32 gigs of this fancy-pants high-density stuff that we got from intelligent memory a little while back not the first time we fit tons of ran into a tiny PC you can check out that video here now moving on to the outside the chassis itself has an ID say unassuming but personally appealing look that would fit in well either on your desktop or in your living room as a console replacement the front panel features a power button that lights up in orange when you turn the system on and you'll also find 2 USB 3 ports headphone and microphone jacks and an SDXC reader for high-capacity cards the back panel has two more USB 3.0 ports as well as two USB to ports four HDMI outputs two gigabit ethernet ports an antenna connector for the built-in wireless AC Wi-Fi and of course a power connector for the included 180 watt power brick while another type of display output such as DisplayPort would have been nice to see at least these are HDMI 2.0 ports meaning that you can get 4k at 60 Hertz as long as you have a compatible monitor or television I wouldn't try to game at that resolution mind you on the GTX 960 anyway but those connections could still be useful if you wanted to use a box like this for other less intensive tasks at high resolution whether it's web browsing your office work or whatever the case may be for accessories you get a screw and Wi-Fi antenna the aforementioned power brick and drivers on a CD although since the Magnus doesn't include an optical drive you'll either need to dig out an external optical drive if you want to get into that CD or you can just use the also included read-only USB stick thumbs up for that one installing our R + + SSD was a breeze the bottom panel comes off quite easily with a couple of thumbscrews revealing the two drive bays and RAM slots our test SSD a Samsung 850 Pro installed with a very simple tool ax stick mounting system that snapped right on to the drive from there it was just a matter of inserting the SSD directly into the SATA ports and securing it with another thumb screw it's one of the easiest SSD installations that I've ever done and will allow you to get up and running in a matter of minutes and remember that these bays also support two and a half inch mechanical drives if you're more into that sort of thing giving you the capability to throw an end to SSD and then up to two high capacity hard drives in here so now let's have a look at some performance numbers though just to see how capable the little Magnus is although we were a little concerned that a desktop gtx 960 would thermal throttle due to being in such a small case our gaming results were actually very good we ran three games at 1080p starting with Crysis 3 on high settings with anti-aliasing and motion blur turned off and the Magnus delivered a very solid 63 frames per second average moving on to tomb raider we got 54 FPS with everything maxed out and FXAA enabled and finally we achieved 38 FPS on the witcher 3 on high settings again with AAA and motion blur off aside from FPS numbers though we wanted to keep an eye on our GPS core clock speed to see if it was throttling in spite of the solid performance and ZOTAC clearly did a solid job with his cooling solution with our GTX sixty running smooth at ten thirty eight megahertz during both our crisis three skybox tear load test as well as a firm arc stress test at 1080p with MSA a cranked up and while that clock speed is about ninety megahertz lower than in videos reference GTX 960 you can still expect a solid inconsistent gaming experience with the Magnus at normal room temperature and speaking of temperatures the core i5 5200 you maintained an average core temperature of a very reasonable seventy degrees Celsius throughout the i-264 system stress test with no thermal throttling either what's really impressive in addition to that though is that the system stayed nearly whisper-quiet even during our most strenuous tests with John standing right next to it during testing and kind of having to get pretty close in order to hear it even after turning off the rooms air conditioning our review unit also scored good marks for power consumption or black.there of so even though the included power brick is rated for 180 watts we didn't come close to hitting that during testing with idle power consumption at a mere 21 watts going up to 34 watts in Ida and 84 watts in fir Marc and only a hundred watts during the crisis three load tests I mean seeing as there are full fledged desktop rigs that can assume close to that while idle this is a big plus if you're an eco concerned individual who's worried about power draw we also put the system through a couple synthetic benchmarks to get a feel for its non-gaming performance it scored 255 in Cinebench 74 38 and winzip and okay although these numbers are just fractions of what you'd expect to get with a desktop core i5 or Core i7 they are respectable when you consider that the i5 5200 U is a low-power part and it only has two physical cores with four threads so watch out for that because while I wouldn't have recommended doing any kind of heavy rendering or like super intensive video editing on a system like this anyway some games don't cooperate well with two cores or less so your mileage may vary in terms of the long-term usability of this system for Gaming which I guess leads us pretty well into the conclusion I don't really have anything negative to say other than there's a slightly weird pickled vegetable smell that was kind of detectable when it was first open but none of that showed up during a during testing anyway and I guess okay I guess if there was something to complain about cost is a bit of a tough pill to swallow on this one because $800 is pretty steep for a bare-bones machine especially when you compare it to what you could build in terms of a fully equipped traditional desktop but if you can stomach the price the solid 1080p performance the thermal management and superb acoustics make the ZBOX Magnus an interesting choice for anyone who wants a bigger than it looks gaming experience in a tiny lightweight package so if you don't know what loot crate is basically it's up basically basically it's a monthly subscription box for geeks and gamers as well as pop culture aficionados so we're going to be unboxing September's summon box with the October theme being time it cost less than 20 bucks a month and gets you 6 to 8 items including licensed gear apparel collectibles and unique one-of-a-kind items they guarantee a $40 value on each crate if you sign up before October 19th at 9 p.m. you will actually receive the October crate if not you'll miss that cutoff and you won't get another chance that crate is gone forever you'll have to wait for the September 1 the good news is they're all pretty freakin cool and they'll all have different themes whether it's like inspired by inspired by Star Wars there we go we've got some hearthstone gear here whether it's inspired by Marvel Walking Dead whatever else the case may be there is always cool stuff so here we've got a supernatural loot crate car we've actually collected a whole whack ton of them down we've got a massive amount of cool stuff is this like a Simpsons that is cool it's like a Simpsons Homer Simpson Buddha thing anyway the point is if any of this sounds appealing you can sign up that loot crate calm slash Linus and enter code Linus to save 10% on any new subscription why is this Yoona you buy very lucky Wow we got like lots more stuff in here scratch off with another coin ooh claim your free card pack well whoever watches this first and claims it first is totally going to get it yeah that's right I am all about the little bonuses for sticking around and watching the sponsor spots right right guys actually I think this is the first time I've ever done anything like that so whatever but what else we got in here free mobile game there we go oh yeah and every month you get like a little booklet that'll have like some articles and some extra extra swag and cool stuff like that and then the Box usually folds into some kind of like cool diorama scene thing as well so it's like a cool place to put all of your summoning stuff nice get this bag open there we go look at him so you go guys that's loot crate calm slash Linus this hat is fucking awesome thanks for watching guys if this video sucked I think you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like well this is a sweatshirt but whatever you get the point or with a direct contribution through our community forum now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so normally I tease something we just did but this time I'm going to teach something we're doing soon I'm going to be running two systems off of a single box and gaming head to head it's gonna be amazing make sure you're subscribed