At a glance, some of Zotac's mini PCs appear rather unassuming, based on size alone. The names are sometimes a dead giveaway that there is more than meets the eye, however, as is the case with the company's new Magnus Mini Creator PC family. Living up to the "Magnus" moniker, these comparatively tiny PCs come outfitted with with an Intel 9th generation Core processor and GeForce RTX graphics.
There are two main models, the higher end (EN72070V) of which totes the following components and features:
- Intel Core i7-9750H (6-cores/12-threads, 2.6GHz to 4.5GHz)
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
- 2x DDR4-2666/24000 SODIMM slots
- 1x M.2 (PCIe or SATA)
- 1x 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps tray
- 3-in-1 memory card reader
- 2x HDMI 2.0-
- 1x DisplayPort 1.4
- 2x USB 3.1 Type-C
- 4x USB 3.0
- 2x GbE LAN
- Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 connectivity
That is an impressive assortment of hardware and features that can rival a desktop many times its size—it measures just 8.27 x 7.99 x 2.45 inches.
The other model is the EN52060V. It's not quite as beastly, but still impressive for its size with a Core i5-9300H CPU (4-cores/8-threads, 2.4GHz to 4.1GHz) processor and RTX 2060 GPU underneath the hood. All other features are the same.
Both of these are available in barebones form, meaning you would need to add your own RAM, storage, and OS to the equation. Alternatively, both also come in a Windows configuration that includes Windows 10, 8GB of DDR4 memory, and 128GB M.2 SSD + 1TB HDD of storage.
I have not played with this particular model, but I have spent hands-on time with some past Zbox systems, and have generally been impressed. That said, the barebones configuration is the better option in my opinion. Either one of these would presumably do well with 16GB of RAM (you can have up to 32GB) and a larger M.2 NVMe SSD, like 512GB or even 1TB. Fleshing things out as such would make for a potent gaming PC that hardly takes up any space.
Zotac did not say when these new mini PCs will be available or how much they will cost.
