One of the biggest nuisances of a gaming tower is its enormous size, which prevents us from being able to place them in our living room to be able to play our favorite PC games from the living room. It is here that the gaming MiniPCs are highly appreciated, since they have the form factor of a console. This is the case of Zotac Magnuswhich has a powerful NVIDIA RTX 3080 inside.
However, we have two different types of this type of computers. On the one hand, those towers that use Mini-ITX plates and small graphics cards. On the other hand, those that use laptop hardware stuffed into a small box where the expansion capabilities that are in the first case are sacrificed. This is the case at hand with the Zotac Magnus. Where the main advantage is that by using hardware that consumes less it allows them to be placed in very compact boxes. Up to what point? Because of the fact that it occupies less space than a new generation video game console.
An RTX 3080 in your living room with the Zotac Magnus MiniPC?
Zotac has just introduced a series of MiniPCs based on 11th generation Intel Core processorbass Tiger Lake-H architecturewhich are combined with NVIDIA RTX 30 for laptopyes Being the most powerful configuration the one that has an RTX 3080. Although we must clarify that it is not the same homonymous desktop graphics card, based on the GA102 chip, but on the GA104 of the RTX 3070. In any case, it manages to get twice the power of the PS5 and has 16 GB of video memory. As for the CPU, the most advanced configuration takes the i7-11800H with 8 cores and 16 execution threads.
In addition, it comes equipped with the following ports:
- Two Ethernet ports, one at 2.5 Gbps and one at 1 Gbps.
- HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a video outputs
- Support Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 and Bluetooth 5.
- 3 in 1 card reader.
- Mini jacks for microphone and speakers.
- Thunderbolt 4 port
- USB 3.1 Type A ports
- LED activity lights.
The only bad thing about the Zotac Magnus is that it uses a single channel memory as a base, despite supporting two. This is because Zotac has occupied only one of the modules SO DIMM with 16GB RAM. Each of them supports modules of up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory each. If we go to the storage we have installed a unit of 512GB NVMe SSD.
However, it is clear that it is a PC due to the expansion capabilities it has in this aspect as well, since we have a second slot of the type M.2 compatible with Intel Optane and space for a hard drive or SSD with a SATA interface and a 2.5 inch size.
Other model variants available
And if you don’t need that much power, the Zotac Magnus has a different variant that keeps the same processor, memory and expansion capabilities, but differs in the graphics card. So we can also choose a RTX 3070 for laptops with 8 GB of video memory. If, on the other hand, our budget is tighter, then we can opt for the Zotac MAGNUS with a i5-11400H and one RTX 3060 6GB.
The only bad thing that we see in this system is that it is not based on the 12th generation Intel Core based on Alder Lake architecture and its high price. At the moment we do not know the prices that it will have in Europe, but if we have to look at its price in Japan these would be more than €1,600 for the simplest model of the three, that is without taking into account consumption taxes. Do you think they are really worth what they cost or, on the contrary, are they too expensive?
