Zotac Enters Steam Machine Fray With SFF 'NEN'

[kcarbotte]

Zotac announced the release of a new Zbox designed for gaming in the living room. The NEN Steam Machine boasts an Intel Skylake quad core processor and Nvidia GeForce graphics and comes bundled with SteamOS and a Steam controller.

Zotac Enters Steam Machine Fray With SFF 'NEN' : Read more

 

[Brian_R170]

"Inside the 5.71-inch tall case, ..." Zotac's website says 210mm x 203mm x 62.2mm (8.27in x 7.99in x 2.45 in)

 

[kcarbotte]

"Inside the 5.71-inch tall case, ..." Zotac's website says 210mm x 203mm x 62.2mm (8.27in x 7.99in x 2.45 in)

That's interesting.
the brochure that Zotac sent us has different dimensions.

• Length: 290mm (11.41in)
• Width: 290mm (11.41in)
• Height: 145mm (5.71in)

 

[Haravikk]

Any word on pricing? The extra 1gb video memory over the Alienware Alpha is nice, and the M.2 slot is especially welcome, especially if the board supports Smart Response (so you could just slap an M.2 SSD in later as a cache and speed up everything), but if it's much more expensive then I'm not sure how well it's likely to do; you'll always pay extra for the small sizes that only a manufacturer can achieve thanks to bespoke components, but there's a limit to how much that can be.

Also, why 4 HDMI ports? I can't imagine there's much of a use case for a home-entertainment system/games console that's running four HDTVs; nice to be able to do sure, but I doubt many will, and anyone that wants that kind of setup would be better off getting a more powerful GPU (with more video memory) to drive it. Can any of them be used as pass-throughs for hooking up other devices into the same setup? Can it deliver separate video and audio (e.g- one to an HDTV, one to an AV Amplifier)?

 

[quilciri]

Looking at the relative size of the HDMI ports, the unit looks closer to 2.45" tall in the pictures.

 

[Brian_R170]

Took measurements from the picture of the back of the unit and based on the size of the Ethernet and USB connectors, the height scales to 2.43in, which is in-line with what Zotac's website says.

 

[Brian_R170]

Another website said... gulp... $999.

 

[quilciri]

Also, why 4 HDMI ports? I can't imagine there's much of a use case for a home-entertainment system/games console that's running four HDTVs; nice to be able to do sure, but I doubt many will, and anyone that wants that kind of setup would be better off getting a more powerful GPU (with more video memory) to drive it. Can any of them be used as pass-throughs for hooking up other devices into the same setup? Can it deliver separate video and audio (e.g- one to an HDTV, one to an AV Amplifier)?

While 4 HDMI outputs is a bit silly for most people, I can see those of us that seriously miss local co-op and don't mind a bit of tinkering setting up a 4-player game of borderlands (or other less-demanding game) on a set of 1080p screens arranged around a card table

 

[Epsilon_0EVP]

Direct X compatibility is wrong

 

[kenjitamura]

Direct X compatibility is wrong

Good catch. That should probably be corrected.

 

[penn919]

Good catch. That should probably be corrected.

I'm surprised nobody else noticed. The defining characteristic of Steam Machines is that it runs SteamOS. The fact that the spec sheet mentions DirectX and snubs OpenGL (aka Vulkan) is inexcusable. OpenGL is actually compatible.

 

[cub_fanatic]

Maximum PC said that Zotac said this thing will be $999. It looks like it is just the $799 barebones Zotac "ZBOX MAGNUS EN970" with a better CPU - a quad core low TDP desktop Skylake i5 vs a dual core w/ HT laptop Broadwell i5. Also, this one comes with an OS, a controller, RAM and a 1TB HDD which makes the $200 price difference seem reasonable vs the Magnus. It would be interesting, though, to see a comparison between the two just to see how much better the Steam Machine's CPU is vs a laptop i5 with the same exact 3GB, 192-bit GTX 960. It looks like even the RAM is going to be the same as the Zbox will use DDR3L instead of DDR4 based on their official specs sheet - http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2015/10/16/11G067946/NEN-STEAM-MACHINE-249906654152.pdf

 

[Epsilon_0EVP]

Good catch. That should probably be corrected.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might mean that the GPU supports DX12, if Windows 10 were installed on it. I still don't think it's right to say a non-Windows machine supports DX12, though.

 

[cub_fanatic]

A little more research into the GPU reveals that it is actually a laptop class GTX 970m with 1280 CUDA cores. This explains the "970" in the Magnus EN970. I'm not sure why they want people to confuse it with the desktop GTX 960 by using the same name because on paper, it looks like this GPU is actually better in just about every way including power consumption. But, in reality, the lower clock speed of the 970m puts it about even with or just below a stock clocked desktop 960 in real world gaming and just below it in synthetic benchmarks. It would be interesting to see if the cooler in this Zotac Steam Machine is able to OC the GPU at all and what kind of performance advantage it would have over a real 960 at the same clock speed.