Zotac Mek1

VERDICT

It’s svelte for a gaming PC, but the MEK1 doesn’t compromise on graphical power.

- James Archer

THE SKINNYMEK1 is new ground for Zotac, which has produced some great compact barebones systems such as the Magnus ER51060 (Shopper 360) but until now hadn’t applied its knowledge to a fully built tower.

It’s still on the small side, to put it mildly. At 418mm tall and just 118mm thick, it’s narrow enough to grab either side with a single hand, yet it includes an 8GB GTX 1070 Ti graphics card – and that’s no small-fry GPU.

In fact, it’s a gaming powerhouse, delivering the 4K performance that its price of £1,440 essentially demands. In Dirt Showdown, running on Ultra settings, the MEK1 produced 110fps at 1,920x1,080, 109fps at 2,560x1,400 and 86fps at 3,840x2,160, so whatever your monitor’s resolution it will be able to handle less demanding games with ease.

A much tougher test came in the form of Metro: Last Light Redux, but the MEK1 still impressed with 76fps at 1,920x1,080 and 44fps at 2,560x1,440 – again, with the highest possible graphics quality. 3,840x2,160 proved too much at these settings, dropping to 19fps, but by changing to High settings and turning off SSAA, we were able to get a far smoother 53fps with only minimal impact on fidelity. The MEK1’s perfect score of 11 in Valve’s Steam VR Performance Test cements it as a fully qualified premium gaming rig.

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