Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This may sound surprising, but I used this motherboard to build a NAS server running FreeNAS. The reason I chose this board is that Zotac motherboards allow the display of BIOS menus via the HDMI port and supports old text-only standards that many TV VGA ports do not. I was limited to FreeNAS also because I was building a 5.6TB server out of 4 2TB drives set to RAID 5. Installing linux or windows to such a large array is not possible and I needed to do things via an embedded OS. This unfortunately does not allow me to take advantage of the boards NVidia ION chipset, but the ability to manipulate the BIOS and FreeNAS settings without having to lug a VGA monitor around was well worth the cost.
Pros:
* Very quite.
* NVidia ION graphics including an HDMI port.
* 4 SATA Ports make it usable for just about all configurations including my 5.6 TB NAS!
* Compatible with all the flavors of linux/windows I threw at it, up until the point I tried to install them on a 5.6TB array.
* Low Power! I hooked it up to a power meter and it registered pulling only 14 W while idle and a measly 40W-100W while running disk IO.
Cons:
* The mini pcie slot is only useful for wifi cards and does not have the necessary connections to support SSD pcie cards. I had initially attempted to install the OS to a SSD on a mini-pcie card and do the wifi through the pcie x1 slot, but the bios could not detect the cards I tried and I had to return them. Now I'm stuck with a wifi card that wont work with FreeNAS and a limitation that requires me to install the operating system to a USB flash drive.
Wrap-Up:
All together this was the cheapest/best way for me to go building my file server even with the limitations. For all other users this board boasts a lot of features and is good for just about anyone accept high-end gamers. If you're looking to upgrade to a low-power motherboard or are building a media-center computer, this is definitely the way to go!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Zotac Atom N330 Dual Core DDR3 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard IONITX-K-E
Experience fluid and vivid high-definition video playback with the ultra-compact ZOTAC ION motherboard. The mini-ITX form factor ZOTAC ION motherboards combine a high-performance NVIDIA ION graphics processor with a power-efficient Intel Atom processor for the ultimate eco-friendly platform that has no troubles handling regular web browsing, e-mail, productivity and HD video playback tasks.NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology harnesses the power of the NVIDIA ION GPU\'s 16 high-speed stream processors for high-definition Blu-ray playback capabilities. PureVideo HD technology decodes HD video formats and enhances standard-definition videos with the NVIDIA ION GPU for flawless HD and superior SD video playback.
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