Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 Dual Core 90-Watt PSU WiFi ITX Intel Motherboard
by Zotac
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Our Price: $299.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $169.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 Dual Core 90-Watt PSU WiFi ITX Intel Motherboard
Customer Review: Amazingly Easy to Set Up. Does not Boot from USB.
Summary: 4 Stars
This board was amazingly easy to set up. Everything is integrated - no flexibility, but no messing around. I tweaked the bios just the tiniest bit and was able to get the thing dual booting Snow Leopard and Windows. It's not going to replace my new Mini any time soon, because hackintoshes aren't super easy to update, but for under $300, including the board, the memory, and the case, it makes a fine second machine for my son.
I deducted one star, because I couldn't figure out how to make it boot from usb. That meant I had to install my operating systems by hooking up my hard drive to my other mac and windows machines. If I had known, I would have bought a SATA dvd drive (there's no IDE connector on this, either - just the sata ports).
UPDATE: per a commenter, the board will boot from a usb cd/dvd drive, just not from a thumb drive. That would bring my rating up half a star to 4.5 stars.
The atom processor is nice and snappy, and I installed 4 gb of memory.
The more I use this board, the better I like it.
Customer Review: Almost perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
This is truly a great board. It has all the features you want in a HTPC board and then some. Admittedly I'm running Windows, but it does "just work" as far as all the connections go. And full screening a blu-ray video with the right software is flawless. I don't use any fans and heat is not a problem.
Wake on USB is great as well. When you put this guy to sleep it goes all the way down, no sound no lights. Then your wireless usb mouse or keyboard wakes it right up. Yay.
Only thing I really wanted that isn't perfect is full screen flash video, such as Hulu. These services are heavy on the CPU, and at 720p resolution for the desktop and Hulu set to a 420p video, the CPU maxes out and the video is a bit choppy. Not quite watchable actually. So I usually have to drop Hulu to 360p. Or you could lower the desktop resolution down when watching Hulu.
That's the only complaint. Overall a really really great HTPC board.
Got 4 gigs of RAM and a WD 1TB Caviar Green.
Customer Review: Great board for HTPC
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Customer Review: Perfet HTPC Solution
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Customer Review: The very best recession motherboard!
Summary: 5 Stars
This board is all you need to setup a nice and clean HTPC.
I set mine up with an Intel 80GB SDD, 4GB Corsair PRO and Win XP Home,... will get Win 7 soon.
Run very smooth on a 40" Sony LCD, all the HD run very clean. Boot up less then 20 sec.
With this setup, I can afford to leave it up all night long.
Pros:
Use less "gas"
Come with power supply
DUAL CORE N330 ION
Built in HDMI
Built in 9400 Nivida
Built in Wi-Fi
Fan-less, noiseless
Play all the HD videos
Cons:
High price,..should start out at $130-$150 not $189.
Run a little hot without fan <70 C
Don't come with power switch.... j/k.