A magnetic resonance apparatus includes a receiving system with at least one receiver configured to process at least one receive signal of a receive channel. The magnetic resonance apparatus further includes at least one switching device configured to variably assign a first number of receive channels to a first number of inputs of the at least one receiver. The switching device has a crossbar switch and a pre-selection circuit connected upstream of the crossbar switch. Each receive channel of a first group of receive channels is directly connected to an input of a first group of inputs that is permanently assigned to the respective receive channel.