Zotac H55 ITX board now available

deruberhanyok · Post by **deruberhanyok** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 6:37 am

Saw this board pop up in the Newegg listings earlier this week for $144.99. It's also on Amazon with a longer time to ship.

I've got one on a wish list for a low power i3 Linux system in an ISK 300-65, but have to wait until tax returns come in before I can buy anything. I may end up putting it off until Ubuntu 10.04 releases anyhow.

Anyone pick one up yet? What are your impressions? How is power draw? Going by the numbers in the i5-661 review I'd be surprised if a system based around it even hit 40W in normal use.

deruberhanyok · Post by **deruberhanyok** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:18 am

Anandtech has a review here:

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3753

The numbers look pretty good. Here's a quick summary of the part that interests me (and, I expect, many others here):

test setup:
PC Power & Cooling 610W PSU (!!!)
i3-530
4GB DDR-3 kits (depending on the models used, these appear to be 1.65v)
2 hard drives (they don't specify the model but I'm guessing they're 3.5")
optical drive (full size, not slim)

They record their power numbers "from the wall" and report 35W idle and 76W load (with integrated GPU). Seems to me with lower power memory (1.35v or even some of the special 1.3v stuff), 2.5" hard drives and a smaller power supply this could make a REALLY low power system.

It also looks like the board supports adjusting CPU, iGPU, memory and PCH voltage, however, oddly for an Anandtech review, they don't specify what ranges it supports for each. Undervolting at least some of the components seems likely. From the comments:

"The base clock can be dropped down to 100MHz and Vcore can be reduced to .10V under the default voltage. Hope that helps."

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:14 pm

Looks like they summarize voltage options here. Vcore available is 1V to 2V in 0.0125V increments.

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3753&p=3

This really seems like a fantastic board. I think it's kind of exciting the direction the industry is heading with integrating the GPU and CPU. Can't wait to see what AMD has to offer with their Fusion line of APUs.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:16 pm

This is my #1 choice for sff board right now unless some other mobo makers comes out with something that tops it in the mini-itx h5x arena. Intel's H57 is obviously pointless with no voltage controls. It's also nice to have integrated wifi 802.11n if needed. I want to pair it with the Lian Li Q08 currently.

Namheul · Post by **Namheul** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:42 pm

Whats with the weird socket location though?

Almost any aftermarket heatsink will fouol on the PCI slot, making it useless.

deruberhanyok · Post by **deruberhanyok** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 6:30 am

I noticed that. Intel's ITX H57 board seems to be the same way. /boggle. I guess the thinking is that an ITX board will go in an ATX case, so there probably wouldn't be room for any aftermarket heatsink much larger than the stock one anyways.

frostedflakes - d'oh! I missed that. Good eye there.

Namheul · Post by **Namheul** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 3:29 pm

Didnt want to wait for Zotac to finally ship these to Australia, plus i have heard a few bad things about the board, so i ordered the Intel one instead. Should be here this week i hope.

ces · Post by **ces** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:50 pm

Namheul wrote:...plus i have heard a few bad things about the board...

What bad things did you hear?

deruberhanyok · Post by **deruberhanyok** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 6:35 am

Bit-Tech has a review of the board:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mother ... d-review/1

Sounds like it needs some BIOS work. Performance isn't bad but lower than it could be, and the undervolting options didn't seem to work for them when tested.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:42 am

Figures that there's growing pains. New chipsets and form factors always seem to have some nagging issues. I think waiting for a fixed bios and maybe a board revision or two would definitely be a good idea.