It was only a matter of time before Zotac took AMD’s latest architecture and placed it in one of their designs. Now they’ve done just that with the Magnus ERX480. They’ve used the same robust chassis that highlights some of the strengths of the Magnus line and modified it for the efficient Polaris 10 GPU. Specifically an RX 480.
ERX480 packs a Polaris punch in a tiny package
Basically what they did is take the Polaris 10 PCB and dynamically mash it up with the motherboard holding a Skylake CPU and married them together. The result is an 8.27 x 7.99 x 2.45-inch package of GPU and compute power. That is, Polaris is scales quite well with most Vulkan and DX12 games so this minuscule PC could be a very convincing console alternative.
Specs include an Intel Core i5-6400T with two DDR4 slots capable of 2133MHZ SODIMMs. That AMD Radeon RX 480 has 4GB of VRAM, which should be sufficient for the target market here. On the front is one USB 3.1 Type C, USB 3.0, microphone and headphone jacks and a card reader. Around back you’ll find two DisplayPort 1.3 ports, dual Gigabit LAN, a WLAN antenna slot and four USB 3.0 ports. The chassis itself is quite unassuming though it stands out in that subtle way that Zotac has taken to these days.
“The Radeon RX480 with Polaris Architecture changes the gaming hardware dynamic with an effective cost-performance combination. We’re excited to partner with ZOTAC, a well-established gaming mini PC manufacturer, to bring together the world first and most powerful AMD based gaming mini PC equipped with a Radeon RX480” said Spencer Pan, AMD Corporate VP and President of Greater China.
Price and availability are unknown but we’d really like to get our hands on one to test. It looks like a mighty interesting entrant into the world of mini-PCs It was only a matter of time until they decided to use Polaris. It’s not the fastest, but under the right cooler it can scream and breath fire. That is, it can provide a great experience. Hopefully we can tell you more about it when it arrives.