Seems quite strange that they opt for an H470 chipset but 10th gen CPU. And that cooler is really pathetic even for a 65W CPU. Reminds me of engine 27 which also has really bad performance.
Take ARK Survival Evolved for example, a game that can easily grow beyond 100GB, especially with extra DLC content. Yet it uses tons of smallish files and receives gigabytes of updates every other week. The write amplification for updating these small files will be cached as long as the drive has enough space and been left powered to re-organize and rewrite its shingles.
But once it's too full or kept too busy, updates could slow below what your broadband delivers.
Shingled media delivers a 25% capacity increase. I'd rather pay those 25% and have the choice to use CMR. But that choice is no longer there, on 2.5" HDD it's currently SMR or bust (apart from some leftover stockpiles).
As a concept it really does only make good sense for low-rate-of-change media storage and/or where the OS is explicitly aware of the drive's geometry and has appropriate caching systems in place. The decision to sell these drives directly to consumers wasn't the best.
Thunderbolt support with a dGPU is a mess, because you have to re-route the external display ports to TB. TB4 on Gen10 hardware: Don't know if that's done or possible. TB3 would be quite nice already, but if you can't re-route the display, you won't get certified as Thunderbolt, AFAIK, while may would be fine with having support for 4 external PCIe lanes on such a compact PC.
A decent number of TB3/4 host add-in cards for desktops have DP input, to enable the video pass through. Even TB3/4 integrated on desktop motherboards will usually have a DP input to enable video passthrough (especially AMD MBs, since many of their top consumer CPUs do not have IGPs).
Good choices for hardware I think. Having a 10th over the 11th will lessen heat as well as choosing a RTX 3000 series card with GDDR6 over GDDR6X VRAM. Not a fan of seeing some hybrid or regular HDD thou. I guess if you got the space, go for it! Or maybe it's justified to so many games becoming around 100GB in size now for storage. | If anyone is making small graphics cards it's Zotac with this RTX 3000 series, I don't think it would have been much possible to be any other board partner.
I have a 2TB SSD system and games drive with a 2TB SSD data drive for musik, videos, pictures and the likes. I can pretty easily install all my most wanted games, so I wouldn't go for an HDD just for games. I have an external HDD for backups and a NAS for backups and my ripped media. How many 100+GB games does one play each week? :) I haven't needed an HDD for programs/games since my 500GB Samsung 840. But I also don't play 5 different AAA games simultaneously, I guess. :D
And Zotac is great for small form factor graphics cards. I have their 2070 in a small mATX, great card! They aren't even that much more costly I think.
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the obvious here: this thing looks better than a PS5\XBOXX while actually being smaller and more powerful. Sure it costs more but it isn't like you can actually but a PS5 or XBOXX for MSRP anyway...
‘Overall, the system has an effective thermal solution, but that comes at the cost of fan noise. For a gaming mini-PC with a 220W TDP GPU, that is to be expected.’
I see buttons for Temperatures and Power but no data about decibels (noise pollution), such as decibels-per-watt, peak noise, etc.
Since fan noise is to be expected, one would expect to be able to know how much there is of it, in order to decide if it’s worth having in order to obtain the often dubious benefit of a somewhat smaller case.
Also, does the slow RAM (in terms of the latency being 22) operate in single channel mode?
With apologies for some shameless brand cheerleading, I'd love to see a similar "essentially prebuilt" SFF Ryzen option with dGPU; even a weak or past-gen dGPU could fit the non-APU chips into a smaller form factor. Retail-available APUs no longer lag the CPUs as much as they did between the Matisse launch and the 5x00G release, so maybe the difference is less dramatic now, but it's still a seemingly unfilled niche.
I normally dont care much about looks of cases but for $2400 it should look cooler than this. This looks like those giant router/modem combo boxes the ISPs use, its ugly.
Got this one as a barebone (1420 EUR Magnus One, + 70 EUR for 16 Gigs and 130 EUR for 1TB Samsung M2) This PC really performs as expected. The best thing is I just can put it on the desk so the child will not fiddle with any funny lights (very decent design with that glowing ring).
The downside is the noise though. Since I'm playing with headphones it doesn't really bother me but taking off the headphones during gaming is like realizing you just disembarked from an airplane. Zotac should do something about the CPU and PSU fan.
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erinadreno - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Seems quite strange that they opt for an H470 chipset but 10th gen CPU. And that cooler is really pathetic even for a 65W CPU. Reminds me of engine 27 which also has really bad performance.abufrejoval - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Sadly all 4TB or greater 2.5" HDDs these days use shingled media: I'm not sure I'd want to recommend those, even for a games library.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Why not?abufrejoval - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Take ARK Survival Evolved for example, a game that can easily grow beyond 100GB, especially with extra DLC content. Yet it uses tons of smallish files and receives gigabytes of updates every other week. The write amplification for updating these small files will be cached as long as the drive has enough space and been left powered to re-organize and rewrite its shingles.But once it's too full or kept too busy, updates could slow below what your broadband delivers.
Shingled media delivers a 25% capacity increase. I'd rather pay those 25% and have the choice to use CMR. But that choice is no longer there, on 2.5" HDD it's currently SMR or bust (apart from some leftover stockpiles).
Spunjji - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
As a concept it really does only make good sense for low-rate-of-change media storage and/or where the OS is explicitly aware of the drive's geometry and has appropriate caching systems in place. The decision to sell these drives directly to consumers wasn't the best.abufrejoval - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Thunderbolt support with a dGPU is a mess, because you have to re-route the external display ports to TB. TB4 on Gen10 hardware: Don't know if that's done or possible. TB3 would be quite nice already, but if you can't re-route the display, you won't get certified as Thunderbolt, AFAIK, while may would be fine with having support for 4 external PCIe lanes on such a compact PC.abufrejoval - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
s/may/many--need editjeremyshaw - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
A decent number of TB3/4 host add-in cards for desktops have DP input, to enable the video pass through. Even TB3/4 integrated on desktop motherboards will usually have a DP input to enable video passthrough (especially AMD MBs, since many of their top consumer CPUs do not have IGPs).RomanPixel - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
Good choices for hardware I think. Having a 10th over the 11th will lessen heat as well as choosing a RTX 3000 series card with GDDR6 over GDDR6X VRAM. Not a fan of seeing some hybrid or regular HDD thou. I guess if you got the space, go for it! Or maybe it's justified to so many games becoming around 100GB in size now for storage. | If anyone is making small graphics cards it's Zotac with this RTX 3000 series, I don't think it would have been much possible to be any other board partner.Death666Angel - Saturday, August 14, 2021 - link
I have a 2TB SSD system and games drive with a 2TB SSD data drive for musik, videos, pictures and the likes. I can pretty easily install all my most wanted games, so I wouldn't go for an HDD just for games. I have an external HDD for backups and a NAS for backups and my ripped media. How many 100+GB games does one play each week? :) I haven't needed an HDD for programs/games since my 500GB Samsung 840. But I also don't play 5 different AAA games simultaneously, I guess. :DAnd Zotac is great for small form factor graphics cards. I have their 2070 in a small mATX, great card! They aren't even that much more costly I think.
Samus - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the obvious here: this thing looks better than a PS5\XBOXX while actually being smaller and more powerful. Sure it costs more but it isn't like you can actually but a PS5 or XBOXX for MSRP anyway...lemurbutton - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
Most people do get the PS5/XSX at MSRP. This thing is 4.8x more expensive.Threska - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
More closely resembles a fat Motorola Cable Modem.Spunjji - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
"looks better than"Hmmm, I'd argue it's about the same at best? YMMV
"more powerful"
Certainly, but -
"it costs more"
As lemurbutton pointed out, it costs 4.8x more - and it's not 4.8x more powerful.
To me the comparison looks pretty favourable to the console, unless you have a specific need for a PC.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
‘Overall, the system has an effective thermal solution, but that comes at the cost of fan noise. For a gaming mini-PC with a 220W TDP GPU, that is to be expected.’I see buttons for Temperatures and Power but no data about decibels (noise pollution), such as decibels-per-watt, peak noise, etc.
Since fan noise is to be expected, one would expect to be able to know how much there is of it, in order to decide if it’s worth having in order to obtain the often dubious benefit of a somewhat smaller case.
Also, does the slow RAM (in terms of the latency being 22) operate in single channel mode?
twotwotwo - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
With apologies for some shameless brand cheerleading, I'd love to see a similar "essentially prebuilt" SFF Ryzen option with dGPU; even a weak or past-gen dGPU could fit the non-APU chips into a smaller form factor. Retail-available APUs no longer lag the CPUs as much as they did between the Matisse launch and the 5x00G release, so maybe the difference is less dramatic now, but it's still a seemingly unfilled niche.easp - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
I keep thinking this is a Motorola cable modem, circa 2014, when I see the hero picture for the article.aj654987 - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
I normally dont care much about looks of cases but for $2400 it should look cooler than this. This looks like those giant router/modem combo boxes the ISPs use, its ugly.noident - Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - link
Got this one as a barebone (1420 EUR Magnus One, + 70 EUR for 16 Gigs and 130 EUR for 1TB Samsung M2) This PC really performs as expected. The best thing is I just can put it on the desk so the child will not fiddle with any funny lights (very decent design with that glowing ring).The downside is the noise though. Since I'm playing with headphones it doesn't really bother me but taking off the headphones during gaming is like realizing you just disembarked from an airplane. Zotac should do something about the CPU and PSU fan.