Zotac IONITX-A-U Mini-ITX Ion Motherboard Review

[Apoptosis]

Zotac IONITX-A-U Mini-ITX Ion Motherboard

Zotac's Mini-ITX motherboard platform, based on Intel Atom's low-power cpu and Nvidia's ION graphics platform, packs a full feature set in a tiny package. With built-on wireless internet, HDMI, high-def audio, and the ability to playback Blu-Ray content with ease, the IONITX-A-U motherboard stands to push HTPCs to a new realm of capabilities.

Zotac's IONITX-A-U Mini-ITX motherboard stood up to a battery of tests and proved itself fully capable of all it promised, from its HDMI output and high definition audio to its built-in 802.11n wireless card and low-power. In almost all benchmarks, the Intel ATOM N330 and NVIDIA ION based motherboard stood head and shoulders above mobile variations of similar configurations. Provided with two sticks of RAM, I think the motherboard would continue to show improvements in all benchmarks, and the ability to overclock the motherboard offers an even more substantial boost in performance. Costing around $179.99, this motherboard is well priced to serve as the ultimate core of a versatile and efficient HTPC.

Article Title: Zotac IONITX-A-U Mini-ITX Ion Motherboard Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1148/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $179.99 plus shipping

[FeRaL]

Wow, look like a nice little combo for a HTPC setup. I'm going to go home and run PCMark05 and Cinebench on my Athlon 2500+ Mobile just for kicks and see how it compares....

[Apoptosis]

awesome, be sure to post up the numbers... Interested in seeing how it compares.

[FeRaL]

Will do.

[FeRaL]

Cinebench : 1530

[Apoptosis]

Cinebench : 1530

wow, so the Zotac IONITX-A-U with the Intel Atom 330 processor is faster than an Athlon 2500+ Mobile... good to know as that was a very popular processor back in the early 2000's.

[FeRaL]

Yeah, it's even overclocked to 2.1 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Win7, and HIS Radeon X800. Could not get results for PCMARK05 though for some reason.

I'm going to run Cinebench on my MP3 Jukebox PC I have in my garage.... (Athlon XP 1700 @ 2Ghz, 1 gig of RAM, Win XP)

[AbyssNOLF]

Did you run PCMark 05 with admin privileges? If you haven't, give that a shot and see if it works out.

[stopthekilling77]

Shame it won't be able to do 3D Blu-Ray

[hnzw_rui]

Question, what temps are you getting on your board and what's your room temp? Did you install the included 60mm fan? On mine, it was 65~70C at 22C ambient so I had to install the fan. Temps dropped down to 23~25C but the included fan was just too darned loud.

[AbyssNOLF]

I did use the fan, and, at least in our test setup, the fan wasn't that loud that it was annoying at all. It's possible that perhaps they have included a new fan in the version that we tested. On the other hand, I will admit to owning an Xbox 360 that has more cooling than a nuclear reactor and sounds like a dull roar trying to knock down my house, so take my subjective conclusions on the volume of the included fan with a necessary grain of salt.

In my tests, even overclocked and after running benchmarks, my processor sat between 26 and 32 degrees celsius. However, another grain of salt to this dish is that the tests were run without the case being completely closed (as in, the lid was off). This means there would be a much greater amount of general air flow over the heatsink and absolute ventilation, even without the fan.

Also, it's winter here.

[graysky]

I have this board and wondered if anyone else tried bumping the FSB from 533 to 667? Runs stable, but the sensors get messed up.

[Kaos Kid]

Since you have this board, how accurate are the claims of Blue-ray decoding over the hdmi? I heard that the ION even with a dual-core mighty mite (my name for the n330's) still is only effective for 720p on medium-sized TV's. I was jonesing for one of these when they first came out because I thought they would do 1080i/p on a 47" Sony, I'm glad now that I didn't get it. I can't believe they are still going for $200 on yolkster.

[hnzw_rui]

Since you have this board, how accurate are the claims of Blu-ray decoding over the hdmi?

1080p Blu-ray works just fine but considering you can get a GF9300-G-E + Celeron E3300 for less than this costs, it doesn't really make much sense anymore. The E3300 also makes for a snappier WMC interface.

[Kaos Kid]

Yeah, my reason for wanting it at the time is I was looking for a mini-itx board with an onboard grpahics solution to fit in my old flex-atx shuttle box (or old Ice Cube, either one) to use as an htpc but I found a MicroFly Cube the fits in my entertainment center (barely) so I am able to move up to mATX.