Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus: Redefining the Small Form Factor PC
by Ganesh T S on April 11, 2012 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ZOTAC
- Fusion
- HTPC
Before proceeding to the business end of the review, let us take a look at some power consumption numbers. We measured power drawn at the wall when the unit was idle, one hour after subjecting the unit to Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously and when playing back a 1080p24 Blu-ray movie backed up as a MKV with HD audio bistreaming. In all cases, an external powered USB 3.0 hard drive was connected to the unit, and Wi-Fi was active (no wired Ethernet). A wireless keyboard and mouse was also connected to the unit.
In the Prime95 + Furmark test, the CPU temperature reached around 85C after 1 hour of loading. The chassis temperature was around 50C. The fan inside the unit was quite noisy under these circumstances, and was audible from 6 ft. away. However, for a mass market product, if is understandable that Zotac didn't want to go in for a fanless solution. That said, it is quite unlikely that consumers are going to end up stressing the PC that much.
| ZOTAC ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus Power Consumption | |
| Idle | 14.1 W |
| Prime95 + Furmark (Full loading) | 31.4 W |
| 1080p24 MKV Playback using DXVA | 24.4 W |
The Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus definitely receives recommendations from us for the size and progressive HD video decode performance. The mSATA SSD is a definite step up from the hard drive based HTPCs we have seen so far. It is slightly let down by the weak CPU in the system, but makes up for it in some disk-heavy workloads. There are plenty of bundled peripherals, and the standard MCE remote is a nice add on for HTPC users. The IR receiver extender is a nice touch by Zotac, making sure that the unit's MCE remote is usable at all times, irrespective of the way the PC is mounted. The mini-optical SPDIF connector ensures compatibility with older receivers, and the HDMI output is also able to carry audio (bitstreamed and decoded PCM).
On the other hand, the lackluster online streaming performance and complete lack of pulldown / deinterlacing capabilities is disappointing. The weak CPU is the price one needs to pay for the form factor and the low cost. The noisy fan may be a problem depending on the workload.
There are a number of specific scenarios in which the Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus comes good. One is unlikely to regret purchasing a unit as long as the drawbacks outlined in this review are well understood.
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tipoo - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Do any exist in this form factor, or are the joints proprietary? For something like this a large passively cooled heatsink would be nice.DanNeely - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I don't think there's room for anything much larger. You've only got 1/4" minus the thickness of the baseplate in additional vertical space. You don't have room to expand sideways either, the area oposite to the USB/Ethernet/etc connectors is taken up by the daughterboard with the audio/Sd/eSata headers.gamoniac - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I have a slightly larger ZBox Nano AD10 with E350. This thing runs hot. I don't passively cooled heat sink would work. Just today, mine shut down again while my wife was using it just for web surfing; this is a long running issue since I had this unit. The small form factor was cute at first but the problem became annoying when it does not do what you bought it for.While it's good to push for smaller form factor, it is even more important that Zotac makes sure that they put out a product that works. On that note, does anyone want to buy a fairly new ZBox Nano AD10 with E350? :(
gamoniac - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
PS: My GPU temp is high as Ganesh's screenshots show in this article. CPU is hot too during normal usage. I even threw in an SSD but that didn't seem to help keeping the temperature down much, so I swapped the SSD out to use somewhere else worthwhile.Matias - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I agree, I also have an AD10 and it runs waaay to hot!Samus - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
For the same price you could build a Pentium G620, Intel Z68 mATX, 4GB DDR3, 128GB Intel SSD, in a SilverStone ML03B chassis that'll fit in beautifully with any receiver, dvd player or other media equipment.It'd be vastly superior in every way. Ridiculously faster, more expandable, quieter, cooler, lower power consumtion (when used with 80+ Bronze PSU) and unfortunately for Zotac, infinitely more reliable.
ZBox Nano's are notorious for overheating, and other than putting them in front of an air conditioner, there is no real way to fix it with such a design. The reviews on Newegg and Amazon have a number of people discussing the shortcomings of this unit with few people saying they'd buy one again.
As usual, DIY trumps all. When a company finds an economical+superior alternative, then its worth AT reviewing it.
Matias - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
This DIY setup is like 5 times larger than the Zotacs, keep that in mind. I also build DIY desktops, but for HTPC the small form factor of the Zotac is still unrivaled.DanNeely - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
The Silverstone case Samus suggested is actually 65 times larger (by volume). It's smallest dimension is the same size as the Zotac's largest...cjs150 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
the problem is that the design is not optimised for fanless operation. What is needed is an after market case which would be a heavy duty heatsink (Hfx, Streacom do these but for full sized mini-itx form). It looks as though even the E-450 just does not have enough power to do the obvious job (as an HTPC) correctly.At the moment the better option is to wait for Trinity ULV or bite bullet and go for a proper mini-ITX board.
Maybe if Intel actually did some proper design of an IGP and fixed the frame rate refresh option that would be best - an i3 but with an AMD IGP is the perfect combination
Zink - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
That mobo sure is cute. Even if it isn't that useful, someone needs to keep pushing new form factors.