ZOTAC ZBOX MAGNUS One i7-10700 RTX 3070 Mini PC

[Aaron_T]

Pre-Ordered this machine the day it was announced to run a VR headset in my living room. Looked like a great mini PC with enough power for VR that I could easily fit into the entertainment console, but wouldn't stick out like a "unicorn vomit" sore thumb.

 

Just wanted to drop some pictures of the internals to help anyone else who may want to get one of these, but need to see some build details to decide.

 

A few things I noticed when tearing it down.

1. The side panels are a pain to align properly when re-assembling, but once you figure it out, it's not bad.

2. There is ZERO room to change the height of the CPU cooler. And only a small amount of give on top of the VRM heat sinks. Don't expect to be able to improve the cooling to put any beefier CPUs in this machine.

3. The GPU space is small, but I was surprised at the size of the Zotac mini RTX 3070. I suspect there are a fair number of mini GPUs that could fit in there. The length and height give a bit of room to play, but the card HAS to be two slot.

4. Haven't done significant thermal testing yet, but initial impressions indicate pretty decent air flow. Incidentally, you absolutely need to have this pc in a place that won't choke off either side or the top. There is a little bottom intake, but it's mostly choked off by the PSU

5. Mostly rubber head thumb screws hold this together. Pretty easy to pop open and swap parts.

6. It comes with a single stick of SODIMM 16GB 3200 Crucial CL22. You may want to get a second stick, or different kit to run dual channel.

 

[LukeD_NC]

Hey @AaronThomas, thanks for posting the details pics.

Can you tell me what the height of the CPU cooler is ? 

Im looking to get one myself and thinking, can it be replaced with NH-L9i or something else ?

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

I am attaching some more pictures with measurements.

 

From looking at the dimensions of the NH-L9i, and measuring the existing cooler in the ZBOX I believe you could fit the NH-L9i into this PC. The potential interference comes most immediately from the VRAM cooling fins, which could in theory be sanded down a bit if need be. Then you have RAM and HDD mounting to deal with. But the footprint of the NH-L9i is 95x95mm which is 3.74... inches, seems to be the exact diameter of the stock cooler.

 

NOTE, the pictured CPU cooler height measurement was taken from the BACK of the motherboard to the inside edge of the case. However, there is roughly 1/8th of an inch of extra clearance, and potentially 1/4 inch extra if you sand down some studs on the inside of the case.

 

 

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomasThank you so much for sharing and taking all these photos !!! I really appreciate it 

How are you finding the temps and noise from the stock CPU cooler ? I imagine it would be the second loudest thing in this PC (after the fan on the PSU ?)

Also the cooler doesn't seem to have any heat pipes does it ? 

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

I have not removed the stock cooler to look under it yet, but if I had to make an educated guess I would say "No" it doesn't have heat pipes.

 

Noise is not bad on stock settings, but you do pay for it in terms of performance. Unfortunately I don't have a decibel meter to give exact numbers, but I ran AIDA64 CPU stress test and Furmark GPU stress test, both at the same time.

 

1. CPU fan during those tests, gets loud for about 5 seconds during "boosting", where the CPU will get to about 4.7ghz, and temps will hit 85 C average.

2. After about 5 seconds, boosting stops, and the CPU down clocks to about 3.4ghz where it will stay indefinitely during synthetic load. Temps are around 60-65C fluctuating, and the CPU fan is audible, but not very loud at all.

3. GPU fans spin up, audible but not very loud, GPU temps during full system stress test stay around 70-72C, no down-clocking on GPU.

4. When both the CPU and GPU are under full synthetic stress like this, my unit has an intermittent coil whine that is louder than either fan. This coil whine only happens under full synthetic load, and not even during 3DMark testing, only when AIDA64 and Furmark are running concurrently. I am not 100% sure, but I think the mainboard is what's causing the whine, but could also be PSU and power draw related.

 

After full synthetic stress tests, with default system settings, I ran 3DMark Timespy and got a score of: 11,946 total, 12,857 GPU, 8,524 CPU

CPU stayed around 4.6ghz with occasional dips during timespy test. GPU stayed between 1850 and 1875mhz during test.

 

So we can see that the CPU throttles less during workloads that are more similar to gaming, instead of synthetic stress tests.

 

I suspect, that the NH-L9i would improve the CPU performance a bit in gaming workloads, and probably a little more in synthetic stress tests. But, the performance with stock cooling is definitely good enough to keep the noise a fair amount quieter than a thin gaming laptop, and the performance high enough such that you'd be hard pressed to notice any lost performance except in the most extreme cases, think Cyberpunk at 4k maxed, or 360hz eSports.

 

[LukeD_NC]

I must say the NH-L9i is a MUST upgrade. The stock fan is loud, even when under minimal load. The stock cooler is 37mm just like the Noctua.

The Noctua performs slightly worse in burst peak workloads, so it sustains the burst of heat worse but in the long term it settles the temps better.

Also I hope that they make an AMD version of this system. Because the motherboard is so easily replaceable it would be great to fit this kind of system out with a 5600X which has nowhere near the power requirements like 10th or 11th gen Intel chips do.

 

 

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

Thanks for posting this update!

I ordered a NH-L9i chromax.black as well, and tried to install it yesterday, however my NH-L9i seems to be defective. One of the four mounting legs seems to be slightly bent and no matter what orientation I put the cooler in that one mount point forces the screw in crooked. But thanks to your update I know it's a defect in the cooler and not a compatibility issue so I can replace with confidence, and not return outright.

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas I had the same exact issue ! I had to very carefully force my screws in at the right angle because they wouldn't go in straight. I don't know if the legs were crooked but they definitely weren't tapped right. Possibly the anodisation process screwed something up here as well ? I've never had this issue with the vanilla NH-L9i.

I managed to get them in eventually and now they sit straight. I had 2 legs affected.

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

Wow! I only had one mount point affected, but the angle of the screw was so crooked I was worried that forcing it in might crack the motherboard.

I tried to use the longer screws provided with the NH-L9i along with the original backplate as a guide to force the NH-L9i mounts straight, but the screws got so tight(and yeah I threaded them through without the backplate once to make sure the threads matched) that I actually bent one of the longer screws.

 

I have seen comments about the anodization on the chromax.black units causing problems, but this one mount seemed too far crooked for it to be just the black coating causing it.

 

When I get the replacement I will update again. Crossing my fingers the replacement can be "adjusted" with some light to medium pressure.

 

EDIT: Thanks for posting the pictures. I love the look of the NH-L9i a lot more than the stock cooler. Also I suspect gaming workloads are better with the Noctua given it's not a full blow synthetic stress test?

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas Here are a few tests I ran on the setup with various CPUs and coolers. Im still waiting on the 11400 which should arrive next week. It will be interesting to see if there is a performance boost without much added noise + power, especially that the 10600 runs memory at 2666, 10700 at 2933 and the 11400 at 3200. I'm hoping it will work and it will be the best performer. In the meantime I would highly suggest switching to a 65W TDP CPU like the 10600 (non-K) and a Noctua Cooler is a MUST !
Note the Max dBA! It's SHOCKING how bad the stock cooler is ! its as loud as a jet engine, makes the system completely unusable imho.

 

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

That is some fantastic data! Thanks a ton for compiling it!

 

Those 10600 results look pretty fantastic all around. Low noise, power draw, and temps, with little to sometimes no performance loss. Even just the cooler swap seems pretty worth it for minor loss of performance, with much better noise and slightly better gaming temps. I am very excited to see what that 11400 you're waiting for can do compared to the 10 series chips. And technically the 10700 is a 65w TDP chip, but we all know how accurate and valuable manufacturer TDP values are...

 

I looked through the BIOS, the docs, and the Zotac product page and didn't see anything about the generation of PCIe bus. I am curious to see if that 11400 can/will run the 3070 in Gen 4 mode or not. I kinda doubt it will, but it would be a neat surprise. Also would be neat if SAM ends up being enabled, but I kind of doubt that a BIOS update to enable it is going to happen.

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas I think the only chance we have is if they eventually update the config to include 11th series support via a bios update, however I think Gen 4 might not be supported on the old boards.

The good thing is we're going to be able to mess around a little bit with the bios since I believe its on a removable chip. So if we brick it we can use an external flasher to program it, which is great !

 

 

 

And yes, the 10700 is officially rated at 65W but it draws up to 220W. 

The 10600 series chips and below are rates also at 65W but max out at 95W (supposedly, although ive seen them go slightly higher around 105w). 

With the NH-L9i being rated at 95W TDP it would make a great fit.

I'm hoping the 11400 doesn't do anything crazy. 

If it works, there's 1 more chip to try and thats the 11600 (which is being release right about now)

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

I did look at the 11600 vs 11600k prices and the K sku is a little over $30 cheaper. The article below describes this in more detail, but the idea was that for a given model, for example 10700 K vs Non K, the K sku at stock settings tended to be slightly lower power draw because of better binned silicon.

 

I am wondering if an 11600k is going to perform better than a 11600 because of better silicon, plus it's cheaper. As we know TDP is horse sh*t so that official rating makes no difference here 125w vs 65w.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16343/intel-core-i710700-vs-core-i710700k-review-is-65w-comet-lake-an-option

 

The one thing to consider here with this particular machine is that regardless of the K vs Non K consideration above. The thermal headroom on this mini PC and the NH-L9i maybe be too low to get any chip up to max performance per watt, except maybe the 10400, 11400 etc.

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas Yep, well the 10600 seems to also be completely unrestrained. So it really leaves the choice between those 3 CPUs.

 

Also here's another option to get more air through the NH-L9i ... this 92mm to 120mm adapter (LINK)

I've ordered one and will test the Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM chromax.Black.swap with it.

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

Oh that is very interesting! And it'd be good for the VRMs also... might have some HDD interference issues though.... it crossed my mind to see if the two top fans could be swapped for higher airflow Noctua fans as well. But haven't measure them yet.

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas I would say on estimate there's only about 3 mm of additional clearance space between the side panel and fan on both the Noctua and the stock fan. So we can only really change the 15mm fan on the Noctua to a max 18mm one. Unless you go higher RPM / industrial. Im quietly hoping the adapter I ordered is no thicker than 3mm so that it fits.

As to the 120mm fan I think you can position the adapter so that it sits more towards the front of the case. So it should be ok with the clearance for the 2.5" disk. However, im prepared to give that up for a quieter / cooler system. 

[Aaron_T]

@LukeD_NC

When you were installing the NH-L9i, did it seem like the mounting pressure of the screws directly against the PCB was causing any flex in the mainboard?

The stock cooler did have a heafty backplate, and I am wondering now if the reason that the NH-L9i is not better all around is because of mounting pressure or consistency issues without a backplate.

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas I was very careful when mounting the NH-L9i. I didn't screw the screws in completely, exactly for this reason. I literally put them on tight enough so that I could see 3 threads (lines) of the screws above the legs of the heatsink. I think any more pressure than that and it could cause warping. 

[LukeD_NC]

@AaronThomas you could also try the CoolerMaster GP200 (Link to review)

It seems to perform as well as the NH-L9i if you put a Noctua fan on it and it has a backplate.

There's also ID-cooling IS-30 with 4 heat pipes but that mounts like the NH-L9i. Im going to try that one, it looks promising especially with a 92-120mm adapter.

[wi_de]

Thanks for all the great info in this topic so far.

 

Magnus One arrived this week, and as many here, i look forward to other people's experience with different coolers, as well as with the up- and down-spin of the stock cooler + 8cm fan vs. other fans like the noctua 9cm fans.
As far as i could measure, perhaps up to 47mm high cooler+fan setup could fit (if you are brave enough to dremel away one of the studs), but i could be wrong?

What about

• AXP-90 (dimensions and info here: AXP-90, 47mm incl. a 15mm high fan) 
• ID-Cooling IS-47K (47mm high, review here) 
• ID Cooling IS-40v3 or IS-40x (both 45mm high)?

(each time with a Noctua NF-A9x14 which i still have from a previous build)

[LukeD_NC]

There's only one problem @wi_de ... the CPU cooler height isnt measured from the motherboard .... its from the top of the cpu

Grab a set of callipers and measure the height of the stock cooler ... it will be 37 mm .... and then whatever space is between it and the side panel.

That will be your final height and it should be about 40-41mm.

So your cooler options really are:

• Noctua NH-L9i
• ID Cooling IS-30
• CoolerMaster GP200

[LukeD_NC]

On a separate note, I just got my 11400 CPU in the mail today and even with the latest bios update the Magnus One isn't booting

I've reached out to Zotac to see if they can include support for 11th gen in the next bios release.

They should be able to because the motherboard uses a H470 chipset. So the hardware can officially support it, its just a matter of having the right CPU microcode in the bios.

Speaking of which, im going to try and inject Rocket Lake microcode and see how I go  Wish me luck  

[LukeD_NC]

I finally got the ID-Cooling IS-30 in and I must say im very disappointed. I thought with 4 heat pipes it would do really well. Especially that I mounted a 120 mm fan to it with J-HACKs fan adapter. 

The heatsink is very low quality. Have a look at the attached photos (it looks like the heat pipes were eroded). Here are the results. I didn't think it was necessary to test any further as it was just underperforming

 

 

[flitze87]

THANK YOU GUYS n GIRLS

 

this is what i was looking for.

i got the magnus one too and iam not happy with the stock cooler as you are.

 

now i have a questions:

why is there this hard min fps drops in gta v and r6s with the noctua?

 

and another one is:

 

is the gp200 upgraded with a noctua fan the better choice than the nh-l9i because of the backplate?

 

[LukeD_NC]

@flitze87 the Magnus stock cooler has a nice thick copper plate and I think that absorbs some of the boost TDP.

So I think the CPU is initially able to boost up more than it does with the Noctua or ID Cooling solution.

 

I can also tell you that if you over tighten the NH-L9i the system won't boot. You have to be careful with how much pressure you tighten the cooler with.

 

I think the G200P might be the safest cooling solution. Its also only 1-2 degrees within the L9i.