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Customer Review
ByWhomeveron January 23, 2013
I was really excited to get this unit to use it for an HTPC and file server over in the corner of the living room to serve files for our other 6 computers - my final goal was to put Windows 2008 server on it - being that it's a power sipper, and toss it in the corner on the book shelf - with the books.
I got it for a good deal. When it came, opened the box, all looks great. The construction is excellent - except for one major detail. More on that in a moment.
Stuck a 4gb 1066 memory chip in it, installed a Hitachi 500gb hard drive, inserted my jump drive to install Windows 8 (test run first before the server), got to 26% and crashed.
Opened the unit back up to keep it from over heating, this time it made it to 90% - crashed.
Took the Hitachi drive out (runs hot), put a brand new Samsung 840 SSD in (they have the lowest power consumption and highest performance and put out almost zero heat), turned off the fan auto settings in BIOS, changing the fan mode to manual and 100% speed (not so quiet anymore). I should also mention that BIOS showed the CPU running at 68 - 70 degrees C. UNDER BIOS and with NO load on the system - on a cold winter day in the mountains.
This time Windows installed all the way through, rebooted, gave me the sign up info, and then when it was processing for the first log in, the system overheated and crashed again.
I was finally, via crashes, able to get the system up and running for a bit, and went to install updates and drivers, but the Zotac website failed and I was only able to download one driver before it entirely failed to serve anymore drivers. Never fear, I used their CD they sent via a USB DVD drive I had sitting around... (for those of you who get stumped on this point and don't have a USB CD/DVD drive - using your other computer, copy the contents of the CD to the jump drive and then use it for the drivers.)
This system itself is fully capable, and has just about everything you could want for a light weight, under powered, low consumption computer - except for 5.0Ghz wireless - and being that they already use an Intel Cintreno wifi chip, it would have cost them a nickel to switch to a Cintreno chip that has a/b/g/n. Otherwise, the ONLY failure of this unit is the way undersized and poorly designed heat sink.
Hey Zotac, did your engineers ever once consider putting these things under full load for 30 min or an hour before you started shipping them? Did you ever think to try to install an OS and make sure that the heat sink can handle the power of the unit itself? Did it ever cross your minds that people have to be able to get the OS onto the system for you to sell them and continue to do so? This is one of those products that is so close to realizing its goal that it's infuriating that they could be so incompetent with their heat sinks - as if Netbooks and laptops don't already run these exact same CPU/GPU's without this problem - but this seems to be a across the board issue with many models of Zotac mini PCs, and something that escapes their test. Some simple copper cooling cores to move the heat away on the bottom side of the MB would of course do the trick, but they penny pinch on the last damned component - the one component that would get their product 5 star reviews. Incompetence on their part.
To make such a wonderful product and then fail on the last component, the heat sink, just sucks. The 5.0Ghz wireless I'll forgive, and if I ever buy another one of these things, next generation, I'd break the warranty sticker, pull the mother board out and change the wifi card to a Cintreno 6250 Wifi card - which you can buy on ebay for less than $9 shipped.
Zotac really dropped the ball on these products (at least the one I received) and was so close to having something fabulous. What a let down.
I've had the product for 24 hours and it goes back today.
Unfortunately it's a great idea that the engineers failed on - and for something so stupid as the heat sink. Don't buy one of these until Zotac entirely revamps their heat sinks.
otherwise, without this one primary and KEY issue, this is a fabulous and well-built product.
UPDATE: January 28, 2013 - after doing some more research, the appears that the problems above are related more to the Intel Atom versions of the Zbox systems, and to the ones higher than the 1.5 and lower than the Core i3 - which of course are much more expensive. A few days ago I decided to order their AD12, the AMD version, which is sold out everywhere and hard to find. I hadn't looked at the lower end AMD stuff for a few years. Turns out the AMD lower end processors / APUs have double the RAM capacity (8gb), they also have SATA III, rather than SATA II as compared to their Intel counterparts. I also discovered after the thing arrived that Intel has disabled virtualization on their Atom processors on this generation (used to be enabled) - which sucks for running a server in Hyper-V, which was part of the intention. Of course the AMD version has it, and apparently far better graphics GPUs in their's as well. The reviews also seem much better. I should have listened to a friend and stayed away from the Intel Atom. The unit should arrive today, but there was snow last night, so we'll see. I'll keep this review updated as I find out.
UPDATE: January 29, 2013. The AMD nano AD12 arrived today, and outperforms the Intel version in EVERY WAY! This thing is very nice and what I was expecting with it above. While the AD12 shows a lower ghz at 1.7, it's actually much faster with the 8gbs of 1333 ram, vs. Intel's 4gb max at 1066. It does in fact have visualization turned ON. The SATA 3 is much faster. The nano models are also built in an aluminum case and are about 1/2 the size of the mini Zboxs. The wireless card is in fact right on the top so it's very easily upgradable to one with 5.0 ghz without voiding the warranty.
DO buy the AMD versions of these machines. Do NOT buy the Intel Atom versions, unless you want overheating and half the performance. The AD12 is very hard to find, and likely because it's the best performing and much smaller than these. Enjoy your Zbox nano.
UPDATE: May 18, 2013. I've been running the AD12 near daily since January and it runs perfectly in nearly every way. I love the AD12. The only things it won't do is play Netflix HD and Blueray disks. If I copy the contents of a Blueray to the computer using MKV, it plays the videos in full HD 1080p just fine. The issue with Netflix is related to Microsoft's Silverlight. The other is just the system's ability to process heavy content from the blueray drive to the system and process the video itself.
I got it for a good deal. When it came, opened the box, all looks great. The construction is excellent - except for one major detail. More on that in a moment.
Stuck a 4gb 1066 memory chip in it, installed a Hitachi 500gb hard drive, inserted my jump drive to install Windows 8 (test run first before the server), got to 26% and crashed.
Opened the unit back up to keep it from over heating, this time it made it to 90% - crashed.
Took the Hitachi drive out (runs hot), put a brand new Samsung 840 SSD in (they have the lowest power consumption and highest performance and put out almost zero heat), turned off the fan auto settings in BIOS, changing the fan mode to manual and 100% speed (not so quiet anymore). I should also mention that BIOS showed the CPU running at 68 - 70 degrees C. UNDER BIOS and with NO load on the system - on a cold winter day in the mountains.
This time Windows installed all the way through, rebooted, gave me the sign up info, and then when it was processing for the first log in, the system overheated and crashed again.
I was finally, via crashes, able to get the system up and running for a bit, and went to install updates and drivers, but the Zotac website failed and I was only able to download one driver before it entirely failed to serve anymore drivers. Never fear, I used their CD they sent via a USB DVD drive I had sitting around... (for those of you who get stumped on this point and don't have a USB CD/DVD drive - using your other computer, copy the contents of the CD to the jump drive and then use it for the drivers.)
This system itself is fully capable, and has just about everything you could want for a light weight, under powered, low consumption computer - except for 5.0Ghz wireless - and being that they already use an Intel Cintreno wifi chip, it would have cost them a nickel to switch to a Cintreno chip that has a/b/g/n. Otherwise, the ONLY failure of this unit is the way undersized and poorly designed heat sink.
Hey Zotac, did your engineers ever once consider putting these things under full load for 30 min or an hour before you started shipping them? Did you ever think to try to install an OS and make sure that the heat sink can handle the power of the unit itself? Did it ever cross your minds that people have to be able to get the OS onto the system for you to sell them and continue to do so? This is one of those products that is so close to realizing its goal that it's infuriating that they could be so incompetent with their heat sinks - as if Netbooks and laptops don't already run these exact same CPU/GPU's without this problem - but this seems to be a across the board issue with many models of Zotac mini PCs, and something that escapes their test. Some simple copper cooling cores to move the heat away on the bottom side of the MB would of course do the trick, but they penny pinch on the last damned component - the one component that would get their product 5 star reviews. Incompetence on their part.
To make such a wonderful product and then fail on the last component, the heat sink, just sucks. The 5.0Ghz wireless I'll forgive, and if I ever buy another one of these things, next generation, I'd break the warranty sticker, pull the mother board out and change the wifi card to a Cintreno 6250 Wifi card - which you can buy on ebay for less than $9 shipped.
Zotac really dropped the ball on these products (at least the one I received) and was so close to having something fabulous. What a let down.
I've had the product for 24 hours and it goes back today.
Unfortunately it's a great idea that the engineers failed on - and for something so stupid as the heat sink. Don't buy one of these until Zotac entirely revamps their heat sinks.
otherwise, without this one primary and KEY issue, this is a fabulous and well-built product.
UPDATE: January 28, 2013 - after doing some more research, the appears that the problems above are related more to the Intel Atom versions of the Zbox systems, and to the ones higher than the 1.5 and lower than the Core i3 - which of course are much more expensive. A few days ago I decided to order their AD12, the AMD version, which is sold out everywhere and hard to find. I hadn't looked at the lower end AMD stuff for a few years. Turns out the AMD lower end processors / APUs have double the RAM capacity (8gb), they also have SATA III, rather than SATA II as compared to their Intel counterparts. I also discovered after the thing arrived that Intel has disabled virtualization on their Atom processors on this generation (used to be enabled) - which sucks for running a server in Hyper-V, which was part of the intention. Of course the AMD version has it, and apparently far better graphics GPUs in their's as well. The reviews also seem much better. I should have listened to a friend and stayed away from the Intel Atom. The unit should arrive today, but there was snow last night, so we'll see. I'll keep this review updated as I find out.
UPDATE: January 29, 2013. The AMD nano AD12 arrived today, and outperforms the Intel version in EVERY WAY! This thing is very nice and what I was expecting with it above. While the AD12 shows a lower ghz at 1.7, it's actually much faster with the 8gbs of 1333 ram, vs. Intel's 4gb max at 1066. It does in fact have visualization turned ON. The SATA 3 is much faster. The nano models are also built in an aluminum case and are about 1/2 the size of the mini Zboxs. The wireless card is in fact right on the top so it's very easily upgradable to one with 5.0 ghz without voiding the warranty.
DO buy the AMD versions of these machines. Do NOT buy the Intel Atom versions, unless you want overheating and half the performance. The AD12 is very hard to find, and likely because it's the best performing and much smaller than these. Enjoy your Zbox nano.
UPDATE: May 18, 2013. I've been running the AD12 near daily since January and it runs perfectly in nearly every way. I love the AD12. The only things it won't do is play Netflix HD and Blueray disks. If I copy the contents of a Blueray to the computer using MKV, it plays the videos in full HD 1080p just fine. The issue with Netflix is related to Microsoft's Silverlight. The other is just the system's ability to process heavy content from the blueray drive to the system and process the video itself.
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