Prebuilt ZOTAC ZBOX E Series EN52060V - Owner's Feedback

MiRi

Case Bender
Original poster
New User
Mar 11, 2020
2
2
There is already a thread about the ZOTAC E52060 / EN72070V / EN72080V on SFF.NETWORK in the news section with a very honorable posting by @LukeD here with a nice disassembling here.

Now here's my story so far:

My main working PC - an ASRock VisionX (such a great piece of HW, alloy housing, top components) - slowly passed away after 5 years on duty. So, a replacement was needed - quickly.
My LOQUE build (shown here) was rendered impossible, because the components were not available in time - thank you, Corona. ?

After a very long phase of considering the market (ASRock, where are your VisionX successors?!) I had to go for the "unloved" ZOTAC ZBOX. Amazon had all parts in stock. These were:
  • ZOTAC ZBOX EN52060V
  • Corsair Vengeance CMSX32GX4M2A2666C18 32GB (2x16GB)
  • Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe
  • Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB SATA
I know, that's i5 and 2060 "only", but the cross comparison posted here (German) made me opt for the EN52060V - mainly for lifetime (lower temperatures under load) and cost (minus 700(!) EUR compared to i7+2080) reasons.

Basically, the device is fine. Low noise during office work and good power for gaming. That's what my requirement specification was also mainly about.

My findings so far are:
  1. Where are all the silver or white housings gone?! All black is so sad. ?
  2. ZOTAC build quality can not match the ASRock VisionX alloy housings. E.g.: The LEDs are shining through the SD card slot. ? C'mon ZOTAC! I fixed that with black duct tape at the "right position".
  3. There is no manual for the BIOS. Why? ? Any help out there?
  4. After doing intense testing I found out that the CPU is heavily thermal throttling at 85°C. ?
  5. I was able to undervolt the CPU by -170mV with stable operation. Wow! ? Still thermal throttling. ? ? Impossible to reach continuous 4.1Ghz under heavy load (CineBench + Prime95 + FurMark simultaneously). We talk about 3,6 GHz after 15+ minutes of stressing.
  6. One core of the CPU is roughly 10°C cooler than the hottest core. Why? Thermal paste not aligned as it should be?
  7. Grapics card RTX2060 seems very fine. 66°C even after heaviest stressing. And I meant "heaviest".
  8. Memory and SSD can reach up to 60°C after very long stress runs. The SATA SSD is always cooler than the NVMe (even though farer away from the HDD fan).
  9. CineBench R20: 1.960 pts.
  10. FurMark 1.21.1.0: 5.060 pts.
All in all it does the job.
Cool'n'quiet during office work and capable of playing every gaming title of my interest at 1080p with ultra settings.
However, the thermal throttling keeps me disappointed.
The GPU was cooled fine - but the CPU was not? Why, ZOTAC?

Any suggestions welcome to eliminate the throttling of the CPU are heavily welcome.

Thanks a lot, guys.
 
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