Hardware First Look: Zotac Nvidia Ion Mini-ITX

"limited to only an old AC97 Realtek ALC662 chipset"

Kind of nitpicking here, but I wanted to point out that the ALC662, while not as nice as the 888 or 889, is actually an HD codec and not an older AC97 only one:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/...d=1&PNid=24&PFid=37&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=144

 

It'll have to be 2 disk NAS, since there are only 3 SATA slots, and one of the is for booting (unless usb key boot)...
Having an external drive as part of a RAID 5 would be pretty unsafe.....

 

since no one thinks this is a good NAS board, what is then? One with 4+SATA slots at the same power outage? Is there an ION mini-ITX board that can do that? And run RAID?

 

Ahh cheers. 660 was AC97 then. My memory fails, but either way, it's poor sound.

 

how about an actual NAS? lol

 

don't lol me! xD

What if you don't want to buy a prebuilt NAS, I mean this is BITTECH where ple build everything under the stars, so why should we start buying pre-made, pre-built now? And BTW, thxs for the awesome answer Mr Obvious.

 

your kidding about Bit-Tech and the pre-built comment right lol they reviewed plenty of prebuilt hardware and setups before and besides your understanding of a NAS is a little misplaced, you dont need this type of hardware for a NAS, most self operating NAS systems used 512mb of ram and a via cpu that operates at 1ghz or less so end point you can take older hardware or older ITX boards downclock an older cpu and its voltage and well what do you know, now you have a NAS wow... lol taking hardware like whats being shown here and making it a NAS is not only foolish but an extreme waste of money.

 

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So instead of all the misplaced 'lol's' and my admittedly lack of knowledge concerning NAS's systems - you could almost (that needs quotation marks, but I'll let you put them there) learn something from your slightly condescending post.

 

well as long as you learned something thats what counts, glad I could help

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2008/09/21/qnap-ts-409-pro-turbo-nas/1

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2008/09/24/qnap-ts209-ii-turbo-nas/1

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/02/01/icy-box-ib-nas4220-b-network-storage/1

 

ya I love QNAP NAS, I own the QNAP TS-409 Pro Turbo NAS and the QNAP TS-109 Pro Turbo NAS, fantastic NAS systems.

 

But, damn expensive

I really really want to do a feature on making your own NAS

 

ya but certainly worth every penny, however my pennies lucked out as I got both of them for free bust still excellent system, ya a how to would be nice, I took some old hardware in the past and built my own low powered nas system but since I got those two QNAP Systems I retired that old rig.

 

Please do! That would be a nice addition to the guides on the site!

 

Can you check to see if it suffers from the same problem as Zotac 9300 motherboard: Non-powered USB ports. This prevents the computer from being able to be woken up by USB. This is a big deal for HTPC enthusiasts because it means the motherboard can't be powered on by a remote control.

 

Point of view have just released their own ION boards:
http://www.techpowerup.com/93687/Point_of_View_Releases_its_First_NVIDIA_ION_Mainboards.html
How about getting one of these to review?

I really like the whole ION system. I am going to make a HTPC out of one as soon as I have the funds (or can get a sponsor). My only requirement is for the board to be Duel Core, have slots for 2 DDR2 dimms, have built in WiFi and a PCI-e slot for a better sound card.

 

Shoot me a PM if/when you find one?
I have the same requirements. I'm even willing to let up on the powered USB ports (I can make the extra effort to hit the switch)
I promise I'll let you know if I have any luck, too

 

Well this Zotac board is almost exactly what I am looking for except it is missing the PCI-e slot and I would really prefer the board without the built in PSU, perhaps they will release another model which will be perfect.

I will let you know if I find any, these boards anre just starting to roll in now.

 

umm the board you linked to does all that minus the built in Wifi, just get the Atom 330 model which is a dual core. and a USB based wifi and if it must be internal then get a usb header to usb adapter and plug it inside the system lol.

 

People may be losing sight of what Ion was designed to do above and beyond a regular Intel Atom platform.
Ion adds much better graphics capability to a low power x86 processor. Some codecs get a boost from nVidia's graphics technology allowing some to be played at 1080p and less intensive games may now be playable at a 720p-type resolution.
Moving to a dual-core Atom adds some processing power for non-accelerated video, primarily flash at full screen 720p and will probably allow slight more intensive games to be played on a 720p output.

These seemed to be designed as a HTPC front-end, running something along the lines of WMC, XBMC or MythTV and should be tested as such. It's also worth seeing how well, or not as the case may be, these run simpler main-stream games, on-line flash games and things that a family may use a computer plugged into the main TV for.


Ion is way too over-powered for a NAS, you're burning power running the nVidia graphics when you don't need to. In fact, you could find that the Atom platform itself is over-power unless you solely want to run x86 compatible software.
What I'd like to see for NAS and similar type applications is something like the Beagle Board:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard
These are at least 3x the price they should be simply because of the economies of scale that Intel, nVidia and AMD enjoy.
However, nVidia is bringing out it's own low-power chip soon (hopefully) and Tegra may well be the low power platform of choice if they position it correctly:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra

Both of the above use processors are based on ARM technology and so should run the Linux distributions that have been made available for this platform.