• Exclusive Review of the Zotac ION

    Exclusive Review of the Zotac ION

    Roydon Cerejo, May 12, 2009 1815 hrs IST

    Smallest and strongest chipset/processor combo commercially available

    Easy playback of HD (1080p) content, small size, low power draw, WiFi, no power supply needed

    Expensive

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Testing Methodology





There's really nothing to directly compare it with, but what we can do is compare the Dual Core Atom with a single core to see how much of an improvement it really is. The main things we'll be focusing on will be;


 

  • Power consumption
  • GPU accelerated HD decoding
  • Casual gaming

 


 


What cabinet to use?






 


 


We certainly could not use the regular mini-ITX cabinet since the power supply area would just occupy space and that would defeat the whole purpose of the AC adapter. Luckily I found out about this company called Panache that deals in min-ITX PC and custom-made cases. They are also the official distributors for Morex cabinets, which is a Taiwan based company that deals in mini-ITX and nano-ITX PC's and cabinets. The T3300 looked quite interesting, so we used that to house the ION.


 






 


 


This cabinet is just the right size for a mini-ITX motherboard and can accommodate a 2.5" laptop hard drive. Now I know there's no space for an optical drive, but if you think about it, you'll only need one during the installation of the OS and drivers. For everything else you can use pen drives or WiFi for transferring data. 


 



Our final build



  • Zotac ION
  • 2x 1GB G.Skill DDR2 RAM (800MHz) Dual channel
  • 2.5" 500GB Seagate Momentus 5400.6 HDD
  • Morex T3300 cabinet


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Discussion Board
(11) Comments
Srikanth Koka
,Hyderabad, on May 13, 2009 10:04 AM
If you drop of the Wifi it would be a steal if it comes around 10K. It costs about 2.5K just for the 90W DC adapter. A good quality SMPS would cost no less than 3.5K anyway. The power usage is a meagre 35W at peak load. Simply awesome. The N330 intel board with crappy graphics and higher power consumption costs around 5.5K. Add to that an SMPS or a DC Power adapter for 3K. For a 1.5K extra you are getting 5.1 analog out, Esata, HDMI, Superior Graphics that supports 1080P, quieter, cooler and power efficient PC. Try to beat that. THIS IS A STEAL, if you have the right application in mind (HPTC, Download Rig etc)
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Jay
,Mumbai, on May 15, 2009 01:02 AM
Fantastic piece of hardware..fantastic review.. I have one question.. I basically want to build a download rig which i can also use to watch movies.. I cannot afford the one with the power adapter and the wifi can the reviewer or someone pls suggest me which cabinet and power supply should i purchase for the other models ?? i.e. the one without the inbuilt AC adapter.. Thanx
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Roydon
,Mumbai, on May 17, 2009 12:28 AM
Zebronics have a couple of mini-ITX cases which you can check out. They also comes with a 400W PSU which will be enough for a HTPC.
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Jay
,Mumbai, on May 18, 2009 08:47 AM
Hi Roydon, Thanx i checked them out...pretty good...but a 400W PSU kills the whole idea of a low cost download rig... I already hav a C2D...want to build an ION based download rig so that i can keep it on 24*7 and save on power... What is the psu power required for this kind of machine ??
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Roydon
,Mumbai, on May 21, 2009 01:56 PM
It dosent matter what PSU you use, ultimately its how much power the components will draw. So even if you put a 700W PSU, the ION will still draw around 50W ie if you're using a laptop HDD. In that case you can even go for a lower wattage PSU but having a little more dosent hurt.
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chris
,mumbai, on May 14, 2009 06:59 PM
In what way Rs 12.500 is Expensive? I find it quite cheap but no PCI then I have think again.
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Sid
,Bhubaneswar, on May 12, 2009 11:58 PM
Manufacturers find many ways to" loot" the non-techie customers and this is one of them. This board is worth 5k and they are trying to sell it for 13k. I'd rather love to buy the latest C2D processor along with a good MB for the same price. This is not Japan and the average indian who can afford a PC can certainly afford a lot of deskspace for sure. Small is certainly beatifull but definitely Non-functional as well. These products are not upto the mark when we talk about performance and one can have the latest Nvidia GPU based MB+C2D CPU+2GB RAM for 12K for a 500% jump in performance. These manufacturers are simply asking for too much of a price. 5K is justified, 6K is O.K. Anything more than that is a Nooooo, Noooooo.
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Ronney
,N.Delhi, on May 14, 2009 11:42 AM
Agreed dude, This product is specially for those people who just want to show off about the machine but not to use. Coz the people who really want a PC for their actual use will definatlly not go with this shitt.. ;)
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Angad
,Los Angeles, on May 14, 2009 04:54 AM
No PCIe = fail. POV has a better board, minus WiFi but with a PCIe 16x slot.
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mike rosenberg
,london, on May 13, 2009 11:55 PM
The Acer Reevo doesn't fit in the palm and it hardly plays Blu Ray (unless you use a bulky USB drive with an extra power cable). We'll be selling this board in a new PC (the D2) for R 28,000 including shipping to India!
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naveenchaudhary
,meerut, on May 13, 2009 12:47 PM
good form factor, suitable for offices, performance is better than other systems with onboard graphics, seems like it cant run vista smoothly, but for xp it is a great deal, price is a major setback. hence no value for money item. but lets see when competetion arises, prices will come down to comfortable levels. but a good buy for office & home/htpc. gamers know what it lacks.
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