Zotac has shown off its latest mini PC at Computex 2026, and anyone who has reservations about the potentially limited performance promises of the Steam Machine might want to take note. Zotac's newly updated Magnus One Ultra will sport a full-sized desktop RTX 5080 inside it, giving you massively increased 4K gaming PC performance in such a small machine.
The mini PC in question is an update to the brand's Zbox offering, which has been on the shelves for a little while now. While a recent version crammed an RTX 5070 Ti into a tiny chassis, the updated "Ultra" model will grow in size by only about 20-30% while seeing big gains in graphical performance.
Even with a slight growth spurt, Zotac claims the Magnus One Ultra is still the world's smallest computer with an RTX 5080 inside it.
To counter volume and cooling worries, Zotac tells me that the brand has installed a more substantial cooling system for the CPU inside the Ultra, which filters airflow better and dissipates it from the CPU more efficiently.
The Magnus One Ultra will still have socketed, upgradeable components. In times like these, it will come in a "barebone" version as well as a full build, to counter massive RAM and storage costs - which is certainly a method of beating Valve's lengthy delays. The barebones model comes without the RAM and SSD, costing less so you can upgrade with parts you currently have or source them yourself, potentially for cheaper.
Compared to the Steam Machine, the Magnus One Ultra won't be so limited to 4K60 promises. The RTX 5080 unlocks plenty of native 4K performance, but also has access to Nvidia's latest DLSS wizardry thanks to its Blackwell architecture. Valve's new mini PC/console, on the other hand, uses a custom AMD APU, which combines the CPU and GPU into a single chip. In other words, it won't use a discrete graphics card like the majority of gaming PCs do. As a result, it'll likely see similar performance to the PS5, which also uses an APU and is based on similar 4K60 frame rate promises (even if it can boot up to 120fps in certain games and performance modes).
While the Steam Machine will run on Steam OS and offer "gaming PC" settings in your games, it hasn't put such an emphasis on an upgradeable design this time around. An alternative small form factor build in something like the Zotac Magnus One Ultra might be a more alluring alternative for PC gamers on the hunt for a living room setup they can upgrade as time goes on.
Just keep in mind that an RTX 5080 inside will almost certainly make it substantially more expensive than what Valve's got in the oven.
For more on gaming PCs and components, take a look at the best graphics card, the best CPU for gaming, and the best RAM for gaming.
