Hardware First Look: Zotac H55-ITX WiFi

10 USB ports + 4 internal is a bit excessive for something that you would use as a media box under the TV.
but it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't negatively impact the price. This is really expensive though so I contribute that to the Wireless N and Gigabit controller.

 

You on drugs? that or I'm missing my sarcasm detectors..

 

I have one of the previous nforce boards I built my media PC around with wi-fi onboard (OK, so it's a USB adapter). I'll be moving to a new apartment soon, and I don't know if I'll be able to run ethernet cable like I have in my current place. So I figure I can use the PC as a wireless bridge, at least for a while.

As for cases, I built mine into an Antec Fusion Remote as I wanted the look of an AV receiver with the volume knob, vfd, and have the built in remote.
But that is probably too large for what a lot of people here want.
Personally, I was going for something that did not look out of place next to my AV receiver and this case fits the bill very well.

 

Well actually on my 9300-itx board in my carPC the wifi allows me to connect to the home server and exchange media files (typically MP3's) without having to run a cable to the car or transfer on external media, plus being integrated into the mobo it's power consumption is lower than most USB adapters, an important concern in a carPC environment where minimal power consumption is critical.
Also the way i have mine wired, the network port connects to a modified Playstation 2 with a 160gb HD and network adapter which allows me to dump ISO files straight from the PC onto the PS2 and then boot from those rather than the original discs. It's a fantastic little setup.

 

Wireless card onboard is a wonderful addition for us Carputer users

I will definately get one of these once they're readily available. Very nice board for my intended application.

 

Just pre-ordered mine on www.cclonline.com and will recieve it on the 4/3/10 carnt wait! They are only getting 10 so be quick as stock will sell really quickly....

 

No, I'm serious. i3, some low voltage RAM, an SSD and a second laptop drive and that's it. The onboard graphics will be more than enough for a Linux accelerated desktop and I need the wifi because my place isn't wired for ethernet in every room. Sure, it's got an excessively large amount of SATA and USB ports, but that doesn't make a difference to me.

I could do the same right now with their G43 itx board, but I figure if I'm going to build a new system with the goal being low power I may as well go for the newest parts - SPCR's power measurements show that such a system would easily fit in a 65W envelope - playback of an h264 blu-ray disc showed power use of 43W DC, and I'm not even looking to do anything THAT taxing. And that's with the i5-661, which would possibly draw more power than a regular i3 due to increased GPU clock. (source)

 

Also, for US readers, I just found it listed on Newegg, where it is in stock for $144.99.

 

Ok thanks very much I can see clearly now!

Genuinely couldn't see how any skt 1156 could be described as low power - still can't see why an atom 330 system won't do the job. but thanks for an interesting viewpoint!

 

Another side question... When overclocking Clarksdale CPUs, are the CPU core and the GPU core strapped together through BIOS settings or are they completely independant?

Also, I know that there are not so many to choose from but in relation to this board and the intended uses can we get a group test of MiniITX compatible power supplies? Would a 300w power supply be enough to run this board with... say a 9600GT, 2xHDD?

 

So £97.10 + 17.5% VAT (so £114.09) of course the odds of buying it that cheap are slim indeed

Found what I assume is same board H55ITX-A-E @ £102.23 inc vat - + delivery
if it is same board then gobsmacked beyond belief & I want one badly!
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=45264&tid=frooct

 

@Oclocker: why ? As you can see in first post, euro price in my country (where everything is a bit overpriced compared to germany) is 124 euros -> 108 GBP. So unless you have even worse shops than in my country, then you will have that 110-120 GBP price for this board.

 

Yes - it appears I was wrong & maybe the bad old days of rip off UK maybe a bad memory (when £=$ exchange rates )

I must be nuts - bought one - probably incapable of building it up as a system but sure be interesting

 

I brought 1 from www.cclonline.com how long have you got to wait? They said 6/3/10 to me??

 

I paid £6 ( @ccl) for next day - I presume you shaved carriage down to £3 ! Gotta start researching best deal re cpu & ram etc.

 

i5 750 or i7 860? Corsair XMS3 4GB, OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD, 1TB Western Digital HDD and XFX HD 5670 GPU.. Thats what im thinking

 

We're having issues with overclocking and our Core i5-750 right now. Waiting on Zotac's response but it might need a BIOS update. I suspect we have an early BIOS since our board says "evaluation only". Best wait for the full review before pre-ordering imo.

 

Well, Atom would work for my intended purposes, sure. But it'd be way less interesting than trying to put this in such a small power envelope.

Also, the only Atom boards I'm seeing with wifi use NVIDIA's ION chipset and I want to avoid proprietary drivers for this box. If I didn't need the wifi I think one of Intel's Atom boards would have been the only real choice, despite the fact that it would be less interesting.

 

I5 661 as no heavy grafix needed, small (cheap!) SSD or a pair raided.. Or may just chicken out & DSR it back to CCL.. decisions, decisions

 

Cheap 40-64GB SSD + i3 530 or G6950 to be honest. It's still a 3GHz CPU, but just lacks turbo boost.