ZOTAC ZBOX-EN1060K-U-W2B MAGNUS Gaming Mini PC Intel Kaby Lake Core i5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 VR Ready Windows 10

Comment

**UPDATE AT BOTTOM** I wanted a small, pre-built, high-end gaming PC, and preferably one that wasnt insanely ugly (as most pre-built gaming PCS are). I would have preferred a laptop but theres just not one that speaks to me yet. This Zbox desktop fit the bill in all regards, so I went for it despite the somewhat mixed reviews. Im super happy with it and taking into account the price, its just about 5-star material. But not quite. The performance is outstanding in all regards, gaming and otherwise. Right now Im mainly playing Overwatch and Fortnite Battle Royal. With both of these games I can do 4K resolution at 100% scale with everything on "high" and never even come close to dropping below 60fps. Epic/Ultra settings are fine for the most part except during intense battles, there are some frame drops. It was hard to choose between 1080p Epic and 4K High but everything is just so sharp in 4K, thats what Im sticking with. At idle the machine is fairly quiet although there is a fan that runs at all times. The fan gets much louder when you start gaming but I dont really notice because I have the audio turned up. It gets a bit hot when under full throttle though. GPU temps hover around 85-88 C, which seems pretty high. To top it all off, its insanely small. I have it sitting on its side next to a PS4 Pro and Xbox One X and wow, its impressive. It does have an external power brick though, which the others do not, but its a reasonably sized brick at least. Sadly, there are two major negatives: 1) 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD (5400RPM) is just a dumb set up. With the 2 aforementioned games installed, Windows fully updated, and a fresh run of Disk Cleanup to remove old/recovery versions of Windows, etc, theres about 35GB free on the SSD. Of course I want to have my games installed on the fast drive and theres only room for a few more. It would have been way better to double this drive to ~250GB and drop the 1TB HDD. The cost would have been the same and with that extra bay empty, then we as customers could opt to buy a second SSD to put in there when needed and both drives would be lightning fast. Most likely at least half the people wouldnt even need that, theyd stick with 250GB SSD and be happy. But as is, most people will want to replace the 1TB HDD with an SSD and that just adds to the total cost of the machine. Thats what Im going to end up doing. Also note, the 1TB HDD isnt formatted so it wont show up in Explorer until you take care of that. I saw a few reviews here mention that it didnt come with the 1TB HDD, my guess is this is why they thought that. You can save $300 by buying it without drives, RAM, or the OS but its not really cheaper to do it that way unfortunately so doesnt seem worth it the hassle of having to install the components and OS yourself. 2) The wifi is **awful** without a tweak. Theres a frequent large lag spikes during games, and often times is completely broken after waking from sleep. I know you shouldnt game over wifi but Ive never had an issue with it on previous PCs or consoles, occasional issues are expected but this is ridiculous. This PC has an intel 3165 wifi chip that has serious lag issues. Every 10-30 seconds it will scan for wifi networks which will result in huge lag spikes in your games. Took me a while to narrow it down because otherwise the wifi is fine, you dont notice these quick lag spikes just when browsing the internet or watching video. But once I figured it out, I found tons of discussion of it online. Its not just this chip, it seems to be all intel wifi chips. This has been an issue for 3+ years and still unresolved, which is crazy. Previous to Windows 10 there was a simple registry hack to fix this but it doesnt work in Windows 10. The solution is to download "WLAN Optimizer". Search for it online, its free. It has an option to disable background checks, Im not sure what voodoo it pulls off on Win10 to make that work but it does indeed work! And theres an option to have it run on boot so you never have to worry about it. Trust me, if youre going to game over wifi, you absolutely have to install this. Its the only way I could get it working. To make doubly sure this was the issue, I actually ended up buying a cheap $8 USB wifi stick and sure enough - even though my reception was much worse with this external stick, there were zero lag spikes. Gaming was perfect. So this is a must-do if youre going to game on wifi. All in all I am very happy. If the Wifi worked out of the box, and it came with a ~250GB SSD + empty 2.5" bay to add your own secondary SSD if needed, instead of a dinky 120GB SSD + slow 1TB HDD, I would absolutely give this 5 stars. But as is, 4 stars. ------- **UPDATE** Sadly I decided to return this. I didnt have any hardware issues like some have had, but the temperature hovering near 90C when playing games had me concerned that it might not last that long. And taking into account the extra money I was going to need to spend for a new SSD + RAM, I decided to just get a different machine entirely. Im still overall impressed with this little guy, you will seriously be amazed at how small it is and how great it can handle games. But ultimately it just wasnt the right choice for me.

Show more

Comment

Editing My review as I am now disgusted. So... was able to utilize this machine now for a few weeks on a project and all was great. Especially after figuring out how to initialize the second hard drive. No biggie there what so ever. But, after 3 weeks now, when I tax the graphics card, the graphics shut off. Machine is still running, as my control software system sees it online and reacting to the program, but no display function at all. Only remedy is to hard restart the machine. Then I have graphics... sometimes... and then again, when being taxed and loaded it dies. Working on attempting to repair, but directed to contact my provider first. As its now no longer returnable being a month and a week post purchase, Im being relatively out of luck... Do not purchase this box in my opinion. Its still buggy...

Show more

Comment

I purchased a Zotac and within weeks, the Nvidia graphics card stopped working. It didnt even appear in the device manager. Had to send it back. Months later, the card failed again...spent hours with them via chat ( could not get anyone on the phone) trying to troubleshoot to no success. Sent it back...then they returned it WITHOUT IT BEING FIXED!! And no one is answering the phones..not customer service, not tech support, not sales, and no one is responding via chat. Worst customer service and computer device Ive ever purchased.

Show more

Comment

Ive had this box for close to a year now in a couple of months. I have to say that I am completely satisfied with this little guy. Everything on it works. I had made my own PCs for years and these days it gets old making your own thing. I jumped on this because 1) it was small and 2) I really didnt have to do anything to set it up. Pop the top cover, put in the SSD, add the RAM, its a sinch. It might be important to say that I got this box as an MMO/LAN party type PC, and it has been a great experience. PROS: - Small Form Factor - No hassle - Low power - No Driver issues - Accessible ports CONS: - Runs hot (to be expected, it is a small form factor running a pretty great graphics card) - No true path to upgrade outside of basic hardware - Cost (again to be expected, as this has two factors going into the price, form factor and prebuilt) Again, I got this for (mainly) my mmo playing. I can move it around, it can sit on my desk and not be in the way in the slightest. Knowing that MMOs will generally run lower graphics, and for a much longer period of time, this box just made sense to me. I really enjoy products that are small and pack a punch, and this box definitely delivers. If you want top end gaming, this box isnt for you. If you want to upgrade over the years to keep up with the top end gaming scene this box isnt for you. If you like no hassle setup for a heavy duty MMO box, this box is definitely for you. I have an ASUS MX27AQ 27" WQHD AH-IPS running at 2560x1440 attached to this box with zero issues when gaming. I have this type of monitor because I also have it attached to my Mac as a secondary screen for when working and drawing. Not sure if its worth noting, but this is also the only PC ive had where the sleep function on Windows doesnt screw something up for me. If you know what youre paying for, and you really like this box, I highly recommend it. I no longer have the want/need to go and buy parts and build something new, so you are definitely paying for a convenience with this machine. Theres some assembly required with the Barebones box, and OS installation, but it was such a quick and easy process its hardly worth mentioning. Thank you, Zotac, for a great product and experience.

Show more

Comment

I purchased the EN1060. Good for gaming, yet small and quiet -- exactly what Ive been looking for. My only issue was that out of the box the unit came with the original BIOS (from 8/30/16) and not the most recent one (from 11/9/16), and as a result the system didnt initially recognize my NVMe M.2 SSD. When I updated the BIOS to the latest version, all was well.

Show more

Comment

I wish I had listened to the reviewer who warned about power outages and brownouts. We had a power outage overnight and my story is the same as his. Woke up to the smell of burned electronics, the ZBOX fan was running at full speed and the machine was burning hot. Picked it up to unplug it and poured leaking coolant all over my floor. If you buy this machine you MUST buy a UPS. Dont risk it. Also, yes this thing has sleep issues. It almost never wakes up and needs to be hard powered down. A slight annoyance, but trivial compared to the self destruct mechanism.

Show more

Comment

The device works as advertised; Ive been able to play AAA games from this year on it without a hitch. I was also able to upgrade the memory and replace the 1 TB HDD with an SSD without any problems. Its a nice tradeoff between the GTX 1080 model (which will require a bigger box b/c the power / cooling needs for that are insane) and portability / size.

Show more

Comment

The concept is great, the design attractive, and the effort admirable. But the implementation is abysmal. The first system I ordered failed within a few hours, and the replacement failed after a few weeks. Both suffered the identical failure: the machine was working fine the day before, it was shutdown for the night, and it wont boot the next day. Ive given it up for a bad job; Im done with Zotac.

Show more

Comment

This machine has just enough oomph to let you play games on your living room TV with settings cranked up. The older the game, the higher the visual flair you can push. For steam games, specially indies, its great for 4K gaming. Since TVs arent the most friendly devices to configure, specially HDR ones, you can make this the ultimate HTPC if you dedicate enough research time to the TV to buy and the configuration of the video and audio output. Slap some 16GB ram + an SSD and youll have a speedy device.

Show more

Comment

Returned it twice. First unit DOA. Second unit booted, installed, updated all drivers and windows. Pro tip, you need to initialize the 1TB hard drive first, it only recognizes the SSD out of the box. After I installed my first game, everything was going great. I checked the game requirements and even use NVidias "Optimum Game Settings" for Nier: Automata. Much to my surprise, the computer froze completely about 15 minutes into game play. And this continued with Overwatch, Destiny 2....the only game it could run was an older game that wasnt graphics intensive. I wasnt about to mess with thermal paste and checking GPU temps because honestly, out of the box, it should have handled it all beautifully. Ended up returning it for a second time. I said screw it, the small form factor is GREAT, but the QC is awful. Went out and just bought a "gaming" rig at Best Buy for the same price, almost exact same specs, just about 4x larger in physical size. Would not buy Zotac PCs again, although I hear their graphics cards are great. Wouldnt know about it.

Show more