by Ilya Gavrichenkov
08/04/2009 | 05:41 PM
Not so long ago we offered you a preview of Nvidia ION platform – another Nvidia’s attempt to settle in the chipset market. Taking advantage of the consumer interest to affordable compact platforms that emerged for a number of reasons, the company proposed to mix energy-efficient Intel Atom processors with their own GeForce 9300 chipset that boasts a pretty powerful integrated graphics core. As a result, they ended up creating a very interesting solution: by joining together low-performance processor and high-performance graphics ION platform used as a basis for nettops and netboks could shoot for a wider application field than the models from Intel using previous generation integrated chipsets, like i945G, for instance. Our experiments showed, ION could serve not only as a basis for primitive home systems that could only suit for web-surfing over sites with minimal Flash usage, launch simple office tasks and casual games, play music and allow picture galleries viewing. Besides everything mentioned above, GeForce 9300 graphics processor can playback HD video with minimal CPU utilization. This specific feature that Nvidia marketing specialists have been stressing particularly, became the primary reason for increased user interest to Nvidia ION platform. Of course, ION can’t become a fully-functional home platform, because its low-performance processor makes it impossible to play comfortably any contemporary 3D games, including even multi-player online titles that do not require that many resources. However, ION has every chance to become a great multimedia home platform. Especially, since it has a number of other important advantages that will be welcomed by home users, such as compact size and low power consumption and heat dissipation.
In other words, Nvidia ION has certain perspective, we can’t deny that. However, the fact that it uses Intel Atom processor did have a serious impact on its market availability. Intel is very reluctant to supply these CPUs without their companion chips with system core logic. However, some company managed to overcome these difficulties and start mass production of solutions built on Intel Atom and Nvidia GeForce 9300. Among them are ready systems, such as compact nettop computers, as well as mainboards that can be used to build a system like that on your own. Our today’s article will be devoted to the latter case: we received a mainboard from Zotac that features integrated Nvidia ION platform components – Intel Atom 230 processor and GeForce 9300 chipset.
Just like the reference ION platform, this mainboard boasts very small size: it is designed in Mini-ITX form-factor. We have recently tested mainboards like that equipped with LGA775 processor socket. Our today’s hero, of course, can’t compete with those solutions in performance, but nevertheless, it can become a pretty interesting choice for systems that do not target high computational potential in the first place. Especially, since Intel Atom processor will offer way better heat dissipation and power consumption levels than any of the LGA775 solutions. It means that Mini-ITX ION mainboards can be installed into considerably smaller system cases than the mainboards of the same form-factors but equipped with LGA775 CPUs. In other words, ION mainboard can potentially deliver very unexpected surprises and definitely deserves a closer look.
Zotac has four Mini-ITX mainboard models on Intel Atom processor and GeForce 9300 chipset. All of them look very similar to one another, but feature pretty different specifications. Among them are solutions with a single- and dual-core Atom processor, with and without WiFi controller, with ATX or unipolar power supply. We received Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard for our today’s review.
This mainboard model has no WiFi on it, is equipped with a single-core Intel Atom 230 processor, but uses an external “notebook” type power supply unit that allows putting this mainboard into very small system cases with the size of a car stereo system.
You can check out the complete list of formal specifications of this mainboard from the following table:
From the specs of Zotac ION-ITX-C, we can notice that it is an almost completely ready computer system as is. There is almost everything you may need, except for the memory and hard drive. So, keeping in mind that a mainboard like that costs about $160, you can build a complete system for as little as $250-$300.
However, the system case may make a few adjustments to this budget. Mass production small cases are mostly pretty pricy and are not too widely spread. But with some persistence you can find very nice-=looking inexpensive solutions, especially since Zotac ION-ITX-C comes with its own power supply unit. For example, we personally really liked M350 Universal Mini-ITX case from this on-line store.
Like many other mass production nettop cases, this solution is equipped with standard VESA mount, so you can easily put it behind your monitor.
But, let’s get back to our mainboard.
Since Mini-ITX mainboards are fairly small (170x170 mm), it isn’t surprising that Zotac ION-ITX-C is shipped in a relatively small box. Nevertheless, this box is larger than you would expect because it also contains the power supply unit.
The box can’t boast sophisticated design or superior informational contents. The black-and-yellow box panels are only decorated with logotypes, marketing slogans and the like. You can’t get any idea of the mainboard or its features unless you open the box.
The accessories bundle is also quite scarce. Besides the mainboard and the power supply unit, you get only a user manual, a CD disk with the drivers, I/O Shield for the mainboard back panel and a set of cables for three SATA hard drives.
On the other hand, we can’t complain that Zotac was excessively economical: everything necessary is here. Although, we believe that it would make a lot of sense to include an HDMI cable with Zotac ION-ITX-C, too.
As we have already said before, this mainboard is based on Intel Atom 230 processor that is soldered to the mainboard and cannot be upgraded. It is a single-core CPU working at 1.6 GHz, supporting 533 MHz bus and featuring 512 KB L2 cache-memory. The CPU supports Hyper-Threading technology that is why the system sees it as a dual-core processor.
I would like to point out that since Atom microarchitecture is initially intended to minimize power consumption and heat dissipation, single-core Atom 230 can do even with passive cooling. Zotac engineers couldn’t miss taking advantage of this feature: ION-ITX-C is covered with a relatively small aluminum heatsink.
I have to say that only a mainboard with a single-core Atom processor can boast a passive cooling system: the solutions with an integrated dual-core Atom 330 are equipped with an active cooler. If you feel that passive cooling is not enough to ensure proper thermal conditions for Zotac ION-ITX-C, you can connect two fans to it: there is one three-pin and one four-pin connector on the PCB. Unfortunately, the board can’t adjust their rotation speed.
There is a single-chip core logic set with the integrated GeForce 9300 graphics core right in front of the same heatsink as the CPU. By the way, this chip makes the primary contribution to the ION platform heat dissipation and power consumption levels: it heats up way more than the CPU on the Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard. That is why we think it is not the best solution to use a single heatsink to cover both; the CPU and the chipset. It makes CPU work in worse thermal conditions than it could be in case they used individual heatsinks for the processor and core logic set. Take, for example, Intel mainboards equipped with Atom processors: the chipset there is equipped with an individual active cooler, while the CPU is topped with a compact passive heatsink only.
The graphics core on Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard integrated into the chipset contains 16 streaming processors and works at 450 MHz frequency. Shader domain frequency is 1100 MHz. In other words, everything is exactly the same as on the reference Nvidia ION platforms that we have already discussed before.
The graphics offered by Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is fully compatible with DirectX 10.1 requirements, supports CUDA technology and can accelerate H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 video playback due to Nvidia PureVideo HD engine.
Zotac ION-ITX-C is equipped with two DDR2 DIMM slots. These are the only slots on the mainboard PCB that are the same as on the desktop platforms. They let the board work with up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM. I have to point out that although the chipset supports DDR3 SDRAM, Zotac developers decided to bet on older DDR2 standard, which reduced the system cost, but had a negative effect on its power consumption.
Besides the memory slots, the board is also equipped with Mini PCI Express x1 slot. Other modifications of this mainboard solution this slot may be utilized for the WiFi controller, but it is free on Zotac ION-ITX-C. As a result, you can use it for any devices of your choice, such as TV-tuner or SD-card reader. Moreover, some manufacturers offer Mini PCI Express x1 → fully-functional PCI Express x1 adapters, which expands the mainboard’s ability to accommodate additional devices dramatically.
One of the most interesting peculiarities of Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is the power circuitry implementation. You can see free contact slotps for a standard twenty-pin ATX power supply connector to the right of the memory slots. But our mainboard model offers a different option: unipolar external power supply unit similar to a notebook one. The corresponding connector for the appropriate prong-type plug is placed on the mainboard back panel, so when the mainboard is inside the system case, the connector is outside. This solution allows using Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard not only in standard computer cases, but also in much more exotic systems. Moreover, computer systems built on this mainboard may be totally noiseless: the processor and chipset use a passive heatsink and the “notebook” PSU also contains no fans.
To save the users time and trouble searching for the appropriate power supply unit, Zotac ION-ITX-C comes bundled with Delta ADP-90SB BB PSU with 90 W output capacity and 19 V output voltage. Note that this PSU is too powerful for the cause: for example, most nettops based on ION platform are usually equipped with 60 W PSUs.
It is important to point out that the use of an unipolar external power supply leads to logical problems with powering different devices connected to the board, such as hard drives and optical drives. However, Zotac engineers offered a very elegant solution to the issue: there is a standard output power connector on Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard that can provide 5 V and 12 V for different devices’ needs. To make it easier to use this connector, they included a splitter among the bundled accessories that allows connecting up to three standard SATA devices to this onboard power port.
The number “three” is not just some number they came up with: it is the number of SATA ports that can be implemented on Zotac ION-ITX-C. Note that these ports are SATA-300 compatible and also support RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays. Besides that, there are pin-connectors for four additional USB 2.0 ports and a serial port.
Most interface connectors, however, are laid out on the mainboard back panel, as usual. There are six USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA connector and RJ45 Gigabit network connector. There is also a PS/2 keyboard connector there, too.
There are three analogue audio-jacks, optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors. The sound on Zotac ION-ITX-C is implemented via six-channel Realtek ALC662 codec that provides pretty good sound quality (according to the results of our tests in 16 bit 44 kHz mode).
There are also three monitor connectors on the back of the board: D-Sub, DVI and HDMI 1.3 (with sound support). The mainboard can work with any two monitors at the same time and the maximum graphics resolution supported by GeForce 9300 is 2560x1600.
It is interesting to check out mainboard BIOS when configuring certain settings may help change some important system parameters, for example, increase system performance. We haven’t paid too much attention to BIOS settings of “small” mainboards before, because there was actually not that much to see anyway. However, things are completely different with Zotac ION-ITX-C. This mainboard not only offers a wide range of system parameters, but even allows overclocking the integrated Atom processor.
The BIOS of Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is based on AMI microcode and its internal structure is typical for full-size mainboards. Several screenshots below will give you a general idea of the structure and informational contents of Zotac ION-ITX-C BIOS Setup:
The settings variety is obviously determined by the fact that Zotac ION-ITX-C is based on Nvidia GeForce 9300 chipset. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is an MCP79 Configuration page in the Chipset section where all enthusiast-related settings are.
As you can see from the screenshot, the mainboard allows increasing the DDR2 SDRAM and chipset voltages. However, the supported voltage ranges are not too impressive: the memory voltage may be increased from the default 1.8 V to 2.1 V, and the chipset voltage – from the default 1.0 V to 1.1 B. Unfortunately, Zotac ION-ITX-C has no options for processor core voltage adjustment, which imposes serious limitations on its overclocking potential.
Nevertheless, there are FSB and memory frequency settings in the BIOS, they are singled out on a separate page called Performance Options. The major timings settings are also here.
However, you shouldn’t hope to squeeze a lot out of the Atom 230 processor working at 1.6 GHz nominal frequency. The maximum overclocking result that we achieved during our practical experiments was 1.98 GHz.
The 20% increase in the processor frequency won’t provide a significant performance improvement. And it means that we can’t really hope to speed our single-core Aton 230 processor up to the level of at least junior LGA775 models.
Even installing an additional fan onto the cooling heatsink doesn’t improve overclocking results. It does lower the CPU temperature quite noticeable, but its overclocking potential hardly gets any higher and even 2 GHz frequency remains unattainable for us. In other words, although the BIOS of Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard offers quite a few enthusiast-friendly options, it shouldn’t be considered an option for overclocking needs.
We have already investigated the performance of Nvidia ION platform in detail. Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is almost identical to the reference platform in hardware, with the primary difference in the support dual-channel memory instead of single-channel one. Therefore, we decided not to run the detailed performance benchmarks one more time, but to pay special attention to the performance of this mainboard in the new Windows 7 operating system.
For our tests we put together the following system:
One of the most stressed advantages of the Windows 7 operating system over Windows Vista is its ability to run flawlessly on “weak” computer systems. ION platform equipped with a single-core Atom 230 processor is undoubtedly one of these not very powerful hardware solutions. Therefore, it was especially interesting to see how the new Microsoft OS will behave on Zotac ION-ITX-C platform.
We have to stress right away that due to the optimizations of Microsoft OS core Windows 7 suits very well for computers built around Nvidia ION platform. Especially, if they have enough RAM. We used a 64-bit OS version for our tests, which should work just fine with 2GB of memory, according to the developers. Therefore, in our case, when we had 4 GB of DDR2 SDRAM installed into our system, we had no problems of any kind. Since more than 512 MB of memory is taken away by the GeForce 9300 graphics core, the applications has over 2.5 GB of memory at their disposal after the system boot up is complete.
Single-core Atom 230 processor working at 1.6 GHz frequency proved powerful enough to ensure sufficiently fast work of the Windows 7 interface. Microsoft’s minimal system requirements state that the system needs to be equipped with at least 1 GHz processor, so even from a formal standpoint Atom 230 can obviously be the heart of a Windows 7 platform. In the meanwhile, our previous experience shows that contemporary operating systems working on single-core processors may sometimes take too long to react to user’s actions, which occurs because the CPU is loaded excessively with system processes. In the meanwhile, we don’t see anything like that in Windows 7 running on Zotac ION-ITX-C: even though Atom 230 is a single-core processor, it supports Hyper-Threading technology, due to which it is detected by the system OS as a dual-core CPU.
Windows 7 installation onto a Zotac ION-ITX-C based platform went smoothly. After the installation is complete, you have to install additional drivers for the graphics core and core logic. Nvidia prepared very well for the new OS launch and all necessary drivers for Windows 7 are available on the company web-site.
Nevertheless, don’t count that Nvidia ION is capable of becoming a basis for a fully-functional system. Even the operating system gives Zotac ION-ITX-C the lowest performance index of only 2.2 (on the scale from 1.0 to 7.9). And the description of the results states that the CPU is not powerful enough and becomes a system bottleneck.
But despite that, all major functions of the new Windows 7 OS work without problems. Aero interface also works just fine, which is, in fact, not surprising: Nvidia GeForce 9300 graphics core is DirectX 10.0 compatible and performs fast enough. Also, a lot of software applications work just fine on a Zotac ION-ITX-C based system. Office applications, e-mail, instant messengers, Skype, simple multimedia applications – all these tasks work perfectly fine.
However, Nvidia ION based system demonstrates ambiguous behavior when used as an Internet terminal. News and other information sites even loaded with a lot of flash banners are no problem for a system built around Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard. Although, we can’t disregard a frustrating observation: when you scroll down the pages with heavy graphics or resizing the browser window, CPU utilization jumps up to 100% and these operations are performed not as smoothly as we expect them to, from our experience with more powerful computer systems.
Another serious test for Zotac ION-ITX-C is fast consecutive opening of links in several browser windows or tabs. This is where you have to come face to face with insufficient processor power: at the fourth-fifth link the CPU utilization hits the ceiling and you can’t do anything else before the pages load completely.
Unfortunately, the above described difficulties occur in any browser, and not just Internet Explorer 8 included with Windows 7. Although they are indeed mostly typical of Internet Explorer 8, and show least of all in Firefox 3.5.1. Nevertheless, even if you install this alternative browser, you can only achieve acceptable web-surfing speed if you visit relatively simple web-sites and do not open too many windows and tabs.
Things are getting worse when we get to video playback through the browser. Even video playback on such sites as youtube.com, fox.com and abc.com becomes a problem. For example, it is totally impossible to playback HD videos in the browser on a computer built around Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard: the CPU utilization hits 100%. In standard quality things playback ok overall, but to ensure that system doesn’t get overloaded, we would recommend you to close all other browser windows.
In other words, the owners of Zotac ION-ITX-C based systems will have to give up comfortable Internet surfing. At least until Adobe starts using Nvidia CUDA technology to accelerate Flash, which seems to be getting close: Nvidia and Adobe announced cooperation in this direction back at the last Computex show.
And in the meanwhile, the users of Intel Atom 230 based systems will have to forget not only about Internet video, but also about web-sites with dynamic flash-design or flash-based games. Here are a few examples: the corporate Nvidia web-site causes a 70% CPU utilization increase, for instance.
Popular multi-player tankionline.com flash-arcade loads a Zotac ION-ITX-C based system to its maximum and the fps rate drops to an unacceptably low level.
We see almost the same in regular 3D games. According to the results of our previous test session, a single-core Atom 230 processor is not powerful enough to handle contemporary games. And it is true not only for resource-hungry simulators, shooters or strategies, but also for some fairly simple multi-player role games, such as World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King or Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne. The slow single-core processor again turns into the primary bottleneck, although on Zotac ION-ITX-C it stands side by side with a pretty high-performance integrated graphics core. And of course, this problem cannot be solved by switching to Windows 7.
So, looks like Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard cannot become a good choice for a fully-functional system. However, you shouldn’t blame this particular mainboard or Nvidia ION platform in general: it is a common problem of all nettops based on a single-core Atom 230 CPU.
The Zotac ION-ITX-C that we received for review performs great in two cases: in applications that do not create computational load, or in tasks that can transfer this low from the CPU to the graphics core integrated into GeForce 9300 chipset. And in the first place this is HD video playback.
Integrated Nvidia GeForce 9300 chipset used in Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard features special PureVideo HD engine that provides hardware acceleration of video playback in MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264 (AVC) formats used for HD video content. Due to this peculiarity any software players supporting DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) can easily playback video in NVIDIA ION based system without losing a single frame. The peculiarity of Windows 7 in this case is that finally there is no need for additional software and codecs installation to ensure support of widespread video formats. The default software video player bundled with the new OS, Windows Media Player 12, has finally acquired support for de facto standard formats, such as DivX, XviD and H.264. So, Windows Media Center also supports these formats. So, new OS will save the users time and trouble with installation codec suites and additional players.
As you can see from the screenshot, during the playback in 1080p of the video recorded in H.264 format, the CPU utilization doesn’t exceed 20%, which indicates that hardware video stream decoding performed by the integrated graphics processor is extremely effective. CPU utilization is about the same during the playback of HD video recorded in other formats.
However, Microsoft Company that has opposed the spreading of third-party video encoding formats, has still left a few frustrating flaws in their Windows Media Player 12. For example, the new player version doesn’t support a popular multimedia Matroska (mkv) container. As a result, big share of downloaded video content cannot be played in Windows 7 without installing some additional software. As a solution to the Windows Media Player 12 issues with data processing in Motroska we could recommend a freeware version of Haali Media Splitter or one of the numerous codec packs.
Some video processing and converter utilities can also use the graphics processor to do their work. Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard suddenly demonstrated a serious performance increase in these still few programs. For example, Badaboom Media Converter – a powerful video converter tool.
As you can see from the screenshots above, once the GPU has been assigned its duties (in our case it is ION), the utility converts video pretty fast barely involving the CPU at all.
Unfortunately, there are still quite few utilities out there that use hardware potential of the GeForce 9300 chipset to the fool extent. However, Nvidia is constantly working with software developers to make sure that this list grows bigger. However, keep in mind that the specifics of the GPU computational resources make it impossible for some algorithms to actually take advantage of them.
This is what explains why media content processing applications are the majority in the list above. And this is the reason why we shouldn’t really expect the general performance of ION platform to increase substantially as more calculations will be made in the GPU.
Summing everything up I should say that Windows 7 operating system is quite fit for Zotac ION-ITX-C based platforms. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Aton 230 processor integrated onto this board poses serious limitations to its functions. Therefore, this platform may be used without any issues only in a limited number of applications. First of all, we can certainly recommend it as a basis for a media center for work with multimedia content. Since most video processing tasks can be transferred to the GPU, the weakness of Aton 230 processor will be barely felt. In all other cases, especially if you intend to use the system quite diversely, we strongly advise checking out the Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard modification with a dual-core Atom 330 CPU.
Although we were not very impressed with the performance of Zotac ION-ITX-C platform because of a slow single-core processor, it has a strong advantage over the solutions equipped with dual-core Atom CPUs. I am talking about lower power consumption and as a result, the absence of any fans, which means that the system will be completely noiseless during work. However, how will the use of a passive cooling solution not only on the CPU but also on a pretty “power-hungry” chipset affect their temperature? It is a good question and we are going to perform special tests to answer it. During our thermal tests we also took the system power consumption from the wall outlet.
We used LinX 0.5.8 to load the CPU and FureMark 1.6.5 to load the graphics core. Temperature tests during video playback were performed using Windows 7 default player – Windows Media Player 12 – and a movie recorded in H.264 format with 1080p resolution. The tests were run in an open testbed, outside the system case:
As you can notice, even though the passive cooling implemented on Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is sufficient in the sense that the board doesn’t get overheated, the chipset and mostly processor temperature modes are far from favorable. From the numbers in the table above you can see that all our concerns came true and GeForce 9300 chipset does in fact heat up the CPU substantially via the mutual heatsink, even if the CPU itself is not really loaded heavily. We would like to remind you that on Intel mainboards equipped with the same Atom 230 processor, where an individual miniature passive heatsink is used to dissipate the heat from the CPU, the CPU temperature in burn mode doesn’t exceed 40-50 °C.
It is also important to keep in mind that the temperature of Aton 230 on Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard exceeded 80 °C threshold even in an open testbed. In this case it is logical to assume that when this mainboard is installed into compact system cases, it will need active cooling. According to the manufacturer recommendations, the maximum temperature for Atom 230 processor shouldn’t exceed 85 °C. In other words, the use of a single passive heatsink without a fan for the chipset and the CPU seems to be a pretty careless solution on Zotac’s part.
As for the power consumption, Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard proved much better here. This board will be an excellent choice for nettops, due to its exceptional energy-efficiency. Even in the “heaviest” modes the total power consumption in our tests never exceeded 32 W. Therefore, it seems to be excessive to bundle Zotac ION-ITX-C with a 90 W PSU.
The first impression from the Nvidia ION platform that we tested several months ago was pretty positive. No wonder, Nvidia simply amazed us with their approach: by combining a weak CPU and a powerful GPU that can speed up many operations usually performed in the processor, the company offered an affordable and energy-efficient platform that could easily solve a lot of tasks that used to require a full-size system. However, now that the euphoria is over, we can look at the ION platform from a more practical prospective. Especially, since it has found its way into the market not only in the reference form but also as third-party mass production solutions.
Nvidia marketing specialists try to convince us that ION platform may take over a significant share of different market segments: as HTPC, as an affordable all-purpose computer system and even as an entry-level gaming platform. However, our experience suggests that the integrated GeForce 9300 graphics core that is part of the ION platform doesn’t work any wonders: Nvidia platform performance appears severely limited by the performance of the Intel Atom CPU. This is exactly what narrows down the possible applications for the ION platforms, especially if it uses a single-core processor modification, like the Zotac ION-ITX-C we have just discussed. As we found out, insufficient performance of the single-core Atom processor causes certain discomfort even during common Internet surfing, not to mention games or similar tasks. Here we are ready to agree with Intel stating that the use of a powerful graphics core is way too much for the Atom CPU and is hardly a promising engineering solution.
As a result, despite Nvidia’s and Zotac’s efforts, we can only recommend Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard as a solution for HTPC systems. Thanks to the GeForce 9300 graphics core that has powerful tools for hardware decoding of MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264 (AVC) video, this mainboard copes perfectly fine with HD video playback. Moreover, it is important that you won’t need to spend hours installing and configuring software for a multimedia system like that. New Windows 7 OS has almost everything necessary for an excellent contemporary HTPC. Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player included with this operating system can take advantage of the graphics chip potential on the one hand and recognize all contemporary video formats on the other. The only serious issue with Windows 7 in this case is probably the lack of popular Matroska container, which can be solved by installing a few additional codecs available online.
True, Zotac ION-ITX-C mainboard is an excellent choice for an HTPC system. The main components layout is flawless, the board uses only high-quality parts, including solid-state capacitors, and even has a Mini PCI express slot, which increases the functionality of this solution. However, even the default mainboard functionality is absolutely sufficient to build an up-to-date system. Zotac ION-ITX-C supports all necessary interfaces. That is why it should be fairly easy to build a home theater PC using Zotac ION-ITX-C. The board even supports HDMI 1.3 with sound in today’s latest TrueHD or DTS-HD formats. And due to an external power supply unit, Zotac ION-ITX-C can fit into extremely small cases with unique design. Although in this case you will have to put some effort into improving the cooling, because fanless design only works in an open testbed, as we have seen during our tests today.
But if you still decided to go for Zotac ION-ITX-C after everything we have just said, please think again. The thing is that this mainboard costs $160 and by adding only another $30 you can get a much better model: with a built-in WiFi module and a faster Atom 330 processor. Compared with Atom 230, it will significantly expand the possible application field for the computer system built around it. However, there is one more possibility. By paying only $105 you can buy Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX Mini-ITX mainboard based on the same exact chipset as Zotac ION-ITX-C but with an LGA775 socket that allows using any compatible processors. In this case you will be able to build a higher-performance system at a comparable price. Of course, LGA775 system will lose to ION in power consumption, but this parameter is of primary significance far not for all users. In other words, there is a big choice of components for compact computer systems in the today’s market and we can’t state with certainty that Zotac mainboards on GeForce 9300 and Intel Atom processors offer the absolute best combination of consumer features.