ZOTAC isn't short of mini-ITX motherboards, but with AMD's Fusion starting to show plenty of HTPC potential, we've been expecting to see the manufacturer dole out a few new-and-improved Intel Atom solutions.
Not wanting to disappoint, ZOTAC has this week introduced a trio of additions to its ION-ITX range in the form of the new R-Series, S-Series and T-Series (pictured) boards.
Designed to squeeze into the mini-ITX form-factor, the boards all utilise Intel's NM10 Express chipset and come equipped with a pairing of a dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor and a second-generation 512MB NVIDIA ION GPU.
Not too dissimilar to what ZOTAC has dealt out before, but there are a few subtle changes worth taking note of. All three boards are equipped with a newly-designed passive cooling solution that promises "a phenomenal quiet computing experience", whilst both the S-Series and T-Series boards support DDR3 memory (SO-DIMM) and come armed with a pair of USB 3.0 ports.
The pick-of-the-bunch T-Series board also squeezes in a PCIe x4 slot (as opposed to PCIe x1 on the R- and S-Series), as well as an onboard DC-DC power supply.
There's no mention of pricing, sadly, but we're looking forward to seeing how the latest crop of Intel small-form-factor solutions compare against AMD's Fusion. Detailed specifications for all three Zotac boards below.
| Product Name | ION-ITX R-series |
ION-ITX S-series |
ION-ITX T-series |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chipset | Intel NM10 Express | ||
| Power | ATX | ATX | Onboard DC-DC power supply |
| GPU | Next-Generation NVIDIA ION w/ 512MB DDR3 | ||
| CPU | Intel Atom D525 (1.8 GHz, dual-core) | ||
| System Bus | 800 MHz | ||
| Memory support | 2 DDR2-800 DIMM slots |
2 DDR3-800 SO-DIMM slots |
|
| Memory capacity | Up to 4GB | ||
| Expansion | PCI Express x1 | PCI Express x1 | PCI Express x4 (open-ended slot) |
| SATA | 2 SATA 3.0 Gb/s | ||
| Display outputs | Dual-link DVI-I & HDMI | ||
| WiFi | 802.11n (150 Mb/s) | ||
| Ethernet | Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mb/s) | ||
| USB | 8 USB 2.0 (6 on back panel, 2 via pin header) | 2 USB 3.0 (back panel) 6 USB 2.0 (4 on back panel, 2 via pin header) |
|
| Audio | 6-channel high-definition audio HDMI audio output Digital S/PDIF output (optical & coaxial) |
||
| DirectX support | DirectX 10.1 with Shader Model 4.1 | ||
| Other hardware features | NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology, NVIDIA CUDA technology, Blu-ray 3D ready, hardware decode acceleration | ||
| Windows 7 capability | Certified for Windows 7 premium | ||
