The Most Expensive Console Gaming Killer YET! - Zotac Magnus EN1080K Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,346 words · ~6 min read
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there has been a flood of trash can PCS
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in recent years all of them vying for the title of the one that finally got it
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right Zotac on the other hand well Zotac
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has no need for trash cans no my friends
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Zotac brings the heat in fancy
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handleless lunchboxes last year's Magnus en980 blew
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our socks and sandals off as a super
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tiny liquid cooled high-end gaming PC
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that we thought was pretty darn close to our vision of the ultimate compact PC so
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then will this year's en1080k VR ready
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Mini PC with a substantial graphics upgrade be even more
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filling let's find out
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roat's iscu plus Force FX features
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pressure sensitive qwe Asad Keys which
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can be configured in three different modes for multiple functions check it
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out now at the link below
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sorry so taking a good look at the new
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Magnus we can see that aside from its totally blacked out matte aluminum
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finish and an HDMI 2.0 port at the front
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for VR very little has changed externally so on the front we've still
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got USB 3.1 type A and typc front panel
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audio and an SDXC card slot and then at
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the back we've got identical looking
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rear iio 2 again frustratingly lacking
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audio jacks making the front panel ones the only ones you get with that said
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DisplayPort 1.3 and HDMI 2.0 are both
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nice addition the en1080k actually has a total of five
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video outputs though only four of them will work simultaneously on the bottom
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we get the same oddly ventilated panel
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along with the familiar honeycombed plastic upper panel that work together
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surprisingly well with a nice mesh that keeps bugs and other debris from making
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it into your lunch okay no I'll stop that now because
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this next bit is super cereal this is perhaps the most important upgrade over
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last year's model lighting
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effects now the Magnus logo is illuminated and the power LED is RGB woo
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so you can use the software to configure it for the world's smallest dance party
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cuz uh that's actually about the extent of the system lighting pulling off the
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bottom panel then gets us to the really fun stuff Zotac ships the en1080k as
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either a completed system or as a
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barebones so if you're going to buy the ladder pay close attention first up
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we've got twin ddr4 sodm slots alongside
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an m.2 SSD slot that thankfully supports
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NVMe this time around then we've got a
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tooless SATA drive rounding out our expansion with the 2 and 1/2 in Drive of
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your choice then if we go further than
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barebones Builders and painstakingly remove all of the panels that is 25
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screws not counting the feet we get a good look at the water cooling system
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complete with radiator Reservoir and
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custom blocks for the CPU and the entire
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desktop grade mxm module
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GPU if you look even closelier you can
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actually see that the CPU block is way
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larger than it needs to be so it's clear
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then that Zotac is taking no Chances with vrm cooling as well as the basics
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which is a great indicator of future
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reliability overall we should hopefully get great thermal results and super low
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noise now let's talk first though about what's under the water cooling for the
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GPU we go from a GTX 980 4 gig all the
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way up to a GTX 1080 8 gig graphics card
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and Zotac decide decided to man up on
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the CPU as well moving from a core i5 to
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a near top-of-the line core i7 7700
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though it should be noted that they are still not allowing overclocking it is
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not a k model I think we can let that
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slide though for how utterly impressive it is that Zotac managed to cram all of
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that in here I mean to put it in perspective at 5.85 L that is under half
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the the volume of the very impressive Corsair 1 that we reviewed recently and
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only slightly more than the lower spec
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MSI Trident that uses air cooling so
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then let's power it on first there's a
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really annoying buzzing
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noise then nothing yes my friends the
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default BIOS configuration has the fan
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not even spinning unless the GPU hits
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50° or higher making the new Magnus much
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quieter at idle than the old model the
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drawback of this config is that under synthetic load we did manage to get the
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CPU to throttle because the default fan
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curve sacrificed maybe too much of its performance for silence the good news
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though is that this two can be tweaked in the BIOS and it's still quieter than
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you'd expect for something so compact
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all right so now the performance Showdown for
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comparison we dusted off its older brother the en980 pulled the Corsair one
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out of the mothballs and grabbed a full-sized KB Lake test bench for
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reference so then we expected the test bench to be faster given its higher
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turbo clocks and higher speed memory but
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what we didn't see coming was how close the en1080k would hang on it handled
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everything we threw at it with flying colors including our synthetic CPU tests
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where it only really lagged behind in the real bench image editing test it
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also provides a great VR experience thanks to the aforementioned front panel
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HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.1 ports making it one
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damn impressive little lunchbox sorry
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sorry couldn't resist but that impressiveness do
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doesn't change a key point that we made in our review of the en980 the inability
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to upgrade the CPU and GPU in the
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magnusen 108k seriously puts a damper on
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its otherwise spectacular performance
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and the $17.99 us price tag yes
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$200 more even than its predecessor is
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for a system that will forever be as you
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bought it say for maybe throwing in some more RAM or storage I mean with a GTX
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1080 a core i77700 HDMI 2.0 DisplayPort
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1.3 USB 3.1 I mean we can't see your
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gaming lunch getting moldy anytime soon
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we're just saying that what are we saying maybe maybe it's this okay
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there's no question that the en1080k is a tiny quiet punching above its weight
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class freaking incred little piece of
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technology Zotac did an outstanding job
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once again but at these prices you just
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have to ask yourself are you hungry enough for frames to spring for this
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water cooled super meal or is it just
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plan so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is
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our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum
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which you should totally join