Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 Dual Core 90-Watt PSU WiFi ITX Intel Motherboard

5 comments

1. 

   K. Gibbons on December 22, 2009 at 12:59 pm

   *SIGH*

   I was excited to receive my first ITX board ever. I have believed boards could have been this small for quite some time but the manufacturers just didn’t have the demand. From the looks of it that will be changing!

   Being new to the mini-ITX form factor, I didn’t think it would matter if I bought an ‘off brand’ model. This board rocked in at 189 clams with Atom dual core processor and had middle of the road reviews, so it must have been good, right?

   Like a squealing child on the-non-denominational-holiday-that-Santa-covers, I flung open the packaging and carefully extracted my SPARKLY, sleek looking ZOTAC board protected in protective tint-wrap. I observed that it was lovingly cradled on it’s underside with anti-static foam. I was feeling pretty good about my off brand.

   I wasted no time and, while observing grounding practices, assembled the mainboard. It amazes me that peripheral hookups (monitor, keyboard, mouse) are truly clumsy interfaces that will be the next items needed for miniaturization.

   After booting to Ubuntu and installing, here are my johnny on the spot observations:

   * This ZOTAC board did not survive 12 hours of burn in.

   * My first inkling of suspicion was that the printed circuit board was slightly sticky. This tells me there was a lack of attention in the curing phase and possibly no burn-in.

   * ZOTAC’s Atom processor is alright, but was sluggish handling a basic Ubuntu OS.

   * The BIOS did not identify a USB as a boot device, but booted from a thumb drive quite admirably.

   My experience can thusly be summed up in the comment my wife so aptly stated as, “I HAD A ZOTAC MOMENT!” This means, of course, when you get the urge to buy an off-branded piece of equipment, you are probably correct to assume you ARE taking a risk that you are buying cheap crap (not inexpensive crap which is a completely understandable pursuit). I can’t say this board was either of those, but the processor was included so hey, it was a party in a package so I couldn’t resist.

   I handle a modest amount of PC building, but in retrospect this is only the 3rd bad moboard I have witnessed in 15 years right out of the box; two were Dell OEM and one was an ABit refurb so it makes me wonder what ZOTAC’s excuse might be (I’m listening). I distrust technology to the fullest extent allowed by law, so this failure was expected and planned for. I will be assembling an Intel mini-ITX board with a Core2Duo this next weekend. Win.

   All of this and I asked, “Was all of this worth the trouble for a recipe kiosk in the kitchen?” To wit, my Ego replied, “Don’t make me make you buy another ZOTAC.” I capitulated.

   <3 Amazon and their return policy.

   -KG

2. 

   Computer Nerd on December 22, 2009 at 2:39 pm

   Well I purchased this Motherboard last week.. I had order all the parts I would need to get started building a Media-Center.

   Good: The Motherboard had no problems handling XP – Win7 32 -64 BIt. Fast and runs very quietly. Bought a larger case to support the Three 1Gig drives. On board HDMI, Optical Audio both were a major points for me.

   Bad: Ok with XP64 – Win7 64 audio not functioning had to load all kinds of drivers and still had issues. Finally went to XP all drivers installed and function looked great on my 46Inch LCD. But playing MKV files were a problem Video sputters and has issues. Tech group on their website states to upgrade BIOS to fix. But very limiting on how to complete this task as all you have to boot from is a CD Rom. Following their instructions and sites they recommend was useless. I have places a ticket with the CO on a better solution on BIOS update and possible fix for the MKV issues. If nothing within 24 Hours will be return to Amazon for another type of motherboard.

   Note: You can not boot from USB so have to have a Sata or Estat CD / DVD Rom handy.

3. 

   C.Anderson on December 22, 2009 at 4:32 pm

   This is a great board for an HTPC. I coupled it with a 1 tb drive and a nice jetway JC-300 mini-itx tower and 4 gb of memory. Loaded up Ubuntu 9.04 and installed XBMC and Boxee. All told about $350 in total.

   With VDPAU through the NVIDIA driver I’m streaming HD 1040p to my t.v. barely breaking 30% of cpu. Runs cool with only one fan, and seems to draw about 30 watts streaming to the t.v. and virtually nothing in hibernate or off, 2 watts in sleep mode. It wakes on usb now, so you can wake it up with media pc remote control.

   There’s nothing not to like about this board. It would work as a low-power desktop. Enough power for officeware and browsing. Not enough video power to play 3d games, even of a few years vintage (enemy territory), but the video is plenty powerful enough for hdtv streaming.

   It could be a bit cheaper and there are some lower cost alternatives for building low power htpc’s, but I’m not complaining. It’s working flawlessly.

4. 

   R. Elliott on December 22, 2009 at 5:24 pm

   This is a fantastic motherboard that does nearly everything. 90w power means you don’t have to feel guilty about leaving it on all night. Dual Atom processors and onboard dedicated graphics lets this even play games reasonably. It works fine with Windows 7, Guild Wars, Left4Dead, even the new Aion plays reasonably on low settings. I currently have 2 1TB HDs and a DVD burner hooked up to it, all work fine. Wireless works fine though I haven’t tested at range.

   To get 720p/1080p video to run correctly (by utilizing the onboard nvidia video card), it takes the right apps and some tweaking. The hardest part about this board is finding a case that makes sense. I ended up buying a small case and removing the power supply. It’s running at reasonable temps with no fans.

5. 

   leat on December 22, 2009 at 7:24 pm

   I replaced the shuttle k45 to this ION N330 motherboard, and so far so good. Most benefit you can get is almost noise-free environment. Shuttle k45 gave me annoying fan noise while it’s working consistently but very little noise I can hear with this ION board.

   One thing I had a trouble was setting a graphic resolution on vista. Connected to the Samsung 40 inch LCD TV and the nvidia graphic chipset set the 1080p resolution automatically, though I want it to lower resolution. This had been resolved after I got the latest chipset driver from nvidia webpage.

   Wish amazon got the M350 Universal Mini-ITX Enclosure case which is a perfect case for this motherboard but I had to buy it from elsewhere.