My first EN1070 showed up! For starters, a size comparison pic between an i5 IRIS BRIX & the Razer Core:
It's about the size of one of those large Harry Potter hardback books, plus about half again as wide. Closest thing I can think to compare it to is one of those tins that dry cookies come in (the ones that always have sewing stuff in them at your grandma's house, lol). It's a bit bigger than the Dell 7040, but in the same size class. The PSU is about the size of the red i5 IRIS BRIX's unit...maybe 7" x 3" or so, pretty large, but not nearly as large as like a Sager's PSU. But it's a good 1/6 the size of the entire Zotac unit.
Whine time, the plastic seems kind of cheap...not KIRF-cheap, but
kinda cheap. For starters, there is a glossy front faceplate (note: the plastic protective cover was very hard to remove, couldn't get my nails under the lip to pull it! lol); mine protudes a bit & you can feel it on your finger...it's flush on the left but sticking out on the right. It's not super thin plastic for the case, but kind of thing...has some flex if you press down on it. iirc the Dell 7040 has either a metal underbody or really thick, heavy-duty plastic that feels much more substantial under finger pressure. The matte plastic also looks kind of cheap, especially around the sides...you can see little manufacturing defects here & there like impressions or little tiny shavings & stuff. It's minor tho, not a big deal at all, just an FYI on the plastic quality. The BRIX feel like they are in a whole different class of fit & finish, but the Zotac doesn't feel as cheap as the ultra-budget PC cases I've used...just like they used cheap plastic to assemble a nice design.
Whoever designed it is a genius. There are two thumb screws on the back; you remove those, slide off the bottom plate, and have access to everything you need to install. Two memory slots, an M.2 slot, and a 2.5" SATA cage. Genius. Excellent, excellent design. Even easier to build than a NUC! (by two screws...lol) I wish the thumb screws were captive screws so you wouldn't risk losing them, but oh well. The SATA cage is also weird...plastic & mounted a bit weird, has like a single thumb screw that kind of clips it down into place. Would have preferred like a cage with a rubbery skeleton for the mechanical drive. Not a biggie since it's not a laptop that's moving around, tho. Unfortunately I don't have any 15mm 2.5" drives handy to test right now, but iirc it does officially support 7mm & 9.5mm drives. Also, I wish there was more than one USB port on the front, that's annoying. It does have a USB-C 3.1 whatever port next to it, but that's not as common as having a couple standard ports up front for things like USB sticks & whatnot.
Initial configuration on my test machine is Win10 Pro, 32gb RAM, and a 512gb 950 Pro. This would make an amazing homelab machine, especially since the upcoming 960 Pro's are also available in 1TB & 2TB sizes, although it's a bit limited with a mobile Skylake i5 (no hyperthreading, which iirc gives about a 25% overall boost to the chip's performance). Going to give Win7 a try after I finish my initial testing. Win10 installed via USB without a hiccup. Normal operation is 40 to 60 watts; around 42 installing Windows, 50 in normal operation, 60 downloading a bunch of stuff. Prime95 (CPU test @ 100% per core) pegged the wattage at 63. Furmark (latest update, 1.18.2.0 with support for the GTX1000 series of GPU's) doubled that. Highest I was able to go was around 153 watts with the GPU at max. Although when I ran the CPU at max in conjunction with GPU testing, it dropped down to 120 watts...not sure if there's some additional thermal or power throttling going on, or what. Furmark kept maxing out the NVIDIA power limiting policy, which kept the GTX1070 at 65C (149F) max, very nice feature. GPU core clock hovered around 900 (like maybe 850 to 920) rather than the upper 1442mhz base clock limit when the heat was on. Never felt like the computer was going to melt (unlike the first-gen Intel Compute sticks, like the one I have from Lemel
Most interesting was the noise. Under normal operation...zero. Just completely silent. Even with the CPU maxed out. It wasn't until I ramped up the GPU that the fan came on audibly...but not in a bad way. The fan is interesting. It's not annoying like on the BRIX Gaming series. It's not soothing background noise either, like a large 120mm fan on a desktop. It's more like an A/C unit working in another room, like a distant fan noise sound. Not bad at all. Very muted. I would not object to having this on my desk in a quiet room because the noise isn't really distracting. Very impressive! Also interesting, the heat blows out through the left side, so be sure to keep that side clear for airflow.
Overall? Awesome. $1200 plus RAM/SSD/OS nets you a ridiculously powerful & compact computer. Easily hit 1,000 Mbps on the NVMe in HD Tune (512gb 950 Pro, need to play with drivers to see if I can get higher). 32 gigs of RAM (the CPU officially supports 64 gigs, so if I can ever get my hands on a SODIMM kit like that, I'll have to give it a shot!) & an 8GB GTX1070 is killer. Only hitch is the mobile i5...which actually handled everything I threw at it just fine, but if you're a specs person, you'll be a bit sad that there's no hyperthreading or i7 sticker on it. However, the EN1080 model has been announced, which is an insane water-cooled mini computer with dual power supplies, and apparently sports a desktop i7-6700, which is a 3.4ghz Skylake with a 4ghz turbo & hyperthreading. No word on price yet tho (the current water-cooled EN980 is $1,370, so one can only hope that this stays at least under $1,500...), but they do have the product page up:
https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1080-10-year-anniversary-edition
Love me some mini computers!
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