CES 2021: Zotac MAGNUS ONE Gaming mini-PC Flagship Charges Up Comet Lake with Ampere
by Ganesh T S on January 14, 2021 1:00 PM EST
Zotac's mini-PC lineup received a new flagship as part of its CES 2021 announcements - the MAGNUS ONE. It features a Comet Lake CPU (Core i7-10700) along with NVIDIA's RTX 3070 GPU. The new model is a natural evolution of features from the previous MAGNUS PCs like the EK71080 and the EN1080K before it, with a heavy dose of inspiration from Intel's Ghost Canyon NUC. The EK71080 moved to a discrete GPU from a MXM-type one in the EN1080K. The new MAGNUS ONE continues that trend with the inclusion of a user-replaceable Zotac RTX 3070 Twin Edge in the system. Gone, however, is the humongous external power brick - Instead, we have a 500W 80+ Platinum internal PSU. The new 8.3L model is also meant to be oriented vertically. The last two aspects provide a distinct 'Ghost Canyon NUC' feel to the new MAGNUS ONE.
The motherboard in the MAGNUS ONE uses a H470 PCH. The CPU's integrated GPU display output (HDMI 1.4a) is also available in the rear panel. The RTX 3070 Twin Edge features four display outputs, and either set can be active for up to four simultaneous display streams. The PC also includes Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi and dual LAN ports (1x 1Gbps + 1x2.5Gbps)
| ZOTAC's ZBOX MAGNUS ONE with Comet Lake | ||||
| ZBOX MAGNUS ONE with 10th Generation Core i7 CPU | ||||
| CPU | Intel Core i7-10700 8C/16T 2.9 - 4.8 GHz 16 MB 65 W |
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| GPU | Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge 5888 CUDA Cores 8 GB GDDR6 |
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| Memory | 2 × DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, up to 64 GB of memory |
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| Storage | M.2 | 1x M.2 2280 slot for PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA SSD 1x M.2 2280 slot for PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD (incl. Optane) |
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| DFF | 1 × 2.5" SSD/HDD | |||
| Card Reader | 1x SDXC Slot | |||
| Wireless | Killer Wireless AX1650 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 controller | |||
| Ethernet | 1 × Gigabit Ethernet 1 × Killer Ethernet E3000 2.5Gbps controller |
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| Display Outputs | 3 × DisplayPort 1.4a (dGPU) 1 × HDMI 2.1 (dGPU) 1 × HDMI 1.4a (iGPU) |
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| Audio | 3.5 mm audio-in 3.5 mm audio-out |
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| USB | 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (Front) 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C (Front) 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (Rear) 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A (Rear) |
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| PSU | Internal 500W 80+ Platinum | |||
| OS | Microsoft Windows 10 or none (barebones) | |||
| Pricing | $1899 (16GB DDR4 DRAM + 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD + 1TB 2.5" HDD + Windows 10 Home) |
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A key difference between the new MAGNUS ONE and the previous flagships from an upgradability viewpoint is the user-replaceable discrete GPU. As long as the GPU to be installed consumes 220W at the maximum and is not longer than 230mm (9.06 in.) and takes up only two slots at the maximum, it is for end users to upgrade the pre-installed RTX 3070 a year or two into the system's service lifetime.
At 8.3L, the system is not as compact as the 5L Ghost Canyon NUC. However, the larger size and the honeycomb chassis should allow for more airflow and easier access to components. The MAGNUS ONE can also accommodate larger GPUs (the Ghost Canyon NUC tops out at 8in.)
The pricing for the MAGNUS ONE ECM73070C with Windows 10 (the 'PLUS' model in Zotac's earlier terminology) is on par with the flagship MAGNUS pricing of previous years. Given the use of the H470 PCH, it appears that Zotac has made optimal use of all the available I/O to deliver a compelling platform for consumers looking at a compact alternative to pre-built PCs from boutique vendors.
Interested in more of the latest industry news? Check out our CES 2021 trade show landing page!
Source: Zotac
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Operandi - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
Only Intel could come up with a standard this stupid. You can get much better results with standard iTX components in a Ghost S1 or similar.tomumu - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
i7-10700 is Comet Lake, not Coffee Lakeingwe - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
I really like this, though it is a bit pricey. I wish this would be AMD though.Gomez Addams - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
Definitely! A 5800X with a 3080 would be a really nice combination in one of these boxes. It might get a bit hot though. ;)Smell This - Sunday, January 17, 2021 - link
"A key difference between the new MAGNUS ONE and the previous flagships from an upgradability viewpoint is the user-replaceable discrete GPU. As long as the GPU to be installed consumes 220W at the maximum and is not longer than 230mm..."__________________________________________________________
At least you could sell the GeForce RTX 3070, and replace it with a Radeon 6700 XT
DanNeely - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
I'm curious how loud it's going to be. I see a 40/50mm fan in the PSU. Unless the PSU gets most of it's cooling from air pulled through by fans elsewhere that tiny fan is a worrying sign because it can't move enough air to keep a high wattage PSU cool without screaming.Operandi - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
Its a Platinum rated PSU so should be generating almost no waste heat so if its designed right it should be silent at moderate loads. I've used 1U server PSUs with 40mm fans that stay very quiet under low load and thats not really a design consideration there.The real problem is going to be laptop grade cooling components in the garbage NUC compute board. As everyone knows Intel isn't exactly winning any efficiency metrics these days so a small blower fan with minimal heatsink in tiny enclosure probably wasn't a very good choice.
Spunjji - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
You're probably right about the PSU - there probably won't be more than 35W of heat to remove even under full-load, so the CPU cooler is definitely going to be more of a problem.However, it is significant that there will be 3 different frequencies of noise - GPU fans, then CPU fan, then the little 40mm. That's going to be quite the symphony 😬
Operandi - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
Nah... if its as efficient as its supposed to be it should be generating less than 5% of its capacity in heat. A 40mm fan at 2000'ish RPM should be able to move enough air to dissipate that much heat and at that speed it would be very quiet. A CPU and GPU creating 500 watts of heat however is going to need a lot of air flow and yeah, you'll hear it.Valantar - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
Wait, hold up a second - this has a _major_ hardware announcement hidden in it: a new NUC Extreme Compute Element, with a desktop CPU! The currently launched NUC 9 Extreme uses soldered mobile (9980HX?) CPUs only, while this seemingly moves to a (socketed!) 65W desktop CPU. It's clear from the design, layout and rear I/O that this is an updated NUC (10?) Extreme-based design. That's a major improvement!