When you hear the brand Zotac, your mind may immediately think of graphics cards, but the company was actually one of the real pioneers in the mini-PC space with its Zbox brand. Zboxes date back to 2011, predating even the original Intel NUC, and Zotac has offered a wide range of models sporting both Intel and AMD CPUs since the very beginning.
There are five new models in total: the Zbox Edge MI672/652, the Zbox nano CI671/651, and the Zbox Edge MA762. You can derive quite a bit about the new mini-PCs from their names: the Zbox M series offers a powerful desktop experience, and the “I” indicates Intel inside while the “A” obviously attests the appearance of an AMD APU.
Zotac Zbox Edge MA672 front and rear I/O.
On the AMD side of things, the MA762 gives you eight Zen 4 CPU cores and two integrated co-processors: Radeon 780M integrated graphics as well as a first-generation Ryzen AI NPU. It also drops some of the USB connectivity from the Intel-based Zbox Edge machines in exchange for a second Gigabit Ethernet port; that could make this system perfect for a home gateway using software like OPNSense.
Zotac says that all of these machines are available in barebones form today, although it didn’t provide pricing or specific availability guidelines. We checked around at the usual e-tail places and couldn’t find them, but we expect that the new Zboxes will pop up at sites like Amazon and Newegg before the week’s out.