With recent advances from both AMD and Nvidia bringing mobile graphics processors within a breath of desktop power levels, PCs that make use of laptop tech to be tiny are more powerful than ever. Iām currently playing with Zotacās GTX 1060-powered Magnus Zbox, and itās handling VR like a champ.
Zotac launched the original mini PC back in 2009, basically taking the same sort of hardware youād see in a laptop and engineering them into a much smaller form factor. Without the need for an internal keyboard or display, clever engineering can make for some very small machines.
Pioneers in the market since the market was a market, Zotacās one of the first manufacturers to bring the latest powerful mobile graphics technology to the mini PC market. Theyāve recently releaseda series of new models in their E-series line, the Magnus EN1060 and EN1070, powered by the mobile versions of Nvidiaās GTX 1060 and 1070 respectively.
Iāve been testing out the EN1060, the lower-specced of the two systems. Pricing on the two units is a bit sketchy at the moment, as it doesnāt seem to be widely available in the States, but Iāve seen prices for the barebones version of the 1060 seen here at around $1,000 in Europe. Iāll nail down pricing once Iām ready for a full review.
The EN1060 comes in three flavors, each with the following tech at its base.
Intel Core i5-6400T (quad-core, 2.2 GHz, up to 2.8 GHz)
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 192-bit
Bluetooth 4.0 / 802.11ac/b/g/n / Dual Gigabit LAN
The barebones system I am testing requires the end user to supply memory and storage, so the first thing I did was open it up to seek inside.
There isnāt much you can do wrong in here. Thereās a clip for a 2.5 inch hard disk, two spots for SODIMM memory (up to 32GB) and an M.2 socket.
To supply the bits I was missing, I turned to Kingstonās HyperX line of gaming-centric hardware. One 240GB Savage SSD and a pair of 16GB SODIMM and I was in the booting business.
I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 to the system and booted it up. Once I got all of my drivers situated (Zotac provides them on both CD and a tiny little thumb drive), I was in the PC gaming business. More specifically, I was in the VR gaming business.
The mobile 1060 is on the very cusp of VR-readiness, so while Valveās HTC-ready tool found the Magnus EN1060 to be more than capable of running VR games with the Vive . . .
. . . the Oculus software does not like the mobile GTX 1060.
Checking the Oculus compatibility list, both the mobile 1070 and 1080 cards are listed, but not the 1060. Thatās not to say the mobile 1060 does not workāIāve tested several games already on the system and have had a relatively smooth experience.
So now I have a small box on my desk capable of powering the two major VR headsets, both of which take up far more desktop space than the system itself.
The Magnus EN1060 Zbox from Zotac says itās the smallest VR ready mini PC, and so far it is definitely a very small computer that works with my VR hardware. Weāll see how it fares in the long runāexpect a full review in the coming weeksābut initial impressions and testing indicate that a technology that requires all the wires and sensors and controllers could really benefit from being powered by a relatively tiny box.
