Zotac ION-ITX-A Review

Posted on May 12, 2009

Go to: Introduction Specifications First Impressions Benchmarks Power Consumption Video Playback Final Thoughts

First Impressions

Zotac's ION-ITX-A board comes with a wealth of ports so far only seen on Socket based Mini-ITX boards. Most noticeable is the full complement of Video and Audio outputs - HDMI, DVI, VGA and 3x 3.5mm outputs as well as both types of S/PDIF digital audio connector.

Also nearly unheard of on a Mini-ITX board is the lack of any expansion slots. The Mini-PCI Express socket is taken up by the internal 802.11n Wi-Fi card which has its own antenna port on the back panel. We don't see the lack of expansion as too much of a problem. There are 6x USB 2.0 ports on the back panel and pin headers for 4 more on the board.

Maximum memory capacity is a generous 4GB, spread across 2x DDR2 667 or 800 DIMMs. In practice this means 4GB as 4GB DIMMs are still very expensive. The 3x SATA 3Gbps ports (and an eSATA port) is a strange number, but we'll take anything more than the usual 2 provided with most current Intel chipset Atom boards.

The board itself is of a high quality with solid capacitors throughout.

Most interesting is the decision by Zotac to include a DC converter directly on the ION-ITX-A version of the board, with a single Female Molex connector providing voltage for to up to 3x SATA devices through a provided adapter cable. A 19V 90W AC Adapter is of course provided. The DC converter idea was used by VIA with their earlier EPIA TC, and is still currently used by AOpen and some other industrial manufacturers with their boards. The advantage is an enclosure does not require its own power supply, and can be much smaller. On the downside this can limit your enclosure choices or the peripherals that you power.

The ION-ITX-B (not pictured or reviewed here) is a fanless single core version of the board without Wi-Fi but with a more traditional 20-pin ATX power connector. You can see the area on the board where this connector goes, to the bottom right of the red DIMM slots.

Here's that earlier shot of the board, this time showing all the stuff we've been talking about. Pay attention. We'll be asking questions in the observation round.

Benchmarks -->

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