Zotac H55-ITX Review - The World's First mini-ITX H55 Motherboard

Contrary to DFI’s P55 MI-T36, the H55-ITX focuses less on overclockability and more on packing as many features as possible onto its miniaturized surface. This isn’t to say that ZOTACs board can’t be overclocked at all though. In fact, I was able to maintain a 150 BCLK while reducing Vcore and without the ability to manually set the CPU VTT voltage using our retail i3 530 CPU.

Where you’ll want to play it safe though is on the Lynnfield series of processors; looking at Zotac’s power regulation for processor VCore, there’s not enough overhead to handle Lynnfield CPU’s much past stock operating frequency. This is an area where DFI got things wrong with the MI-T36, initial BIOS releases offered free range of BCLK and voltage and users ended up burning out MOSFETs. DFI back-peddled and released a BIOS in late December that removed CPU VCore as an option, limiting overclocking to stock processor VID only. Zotac keeps things simple by removing the option to change VTT (termination and supply voltage for the intergrated memory controller and signal stages of the CPU), which limits the potential to increase bus frequencies – time will tell if this method is sufficient to prevent failures. The truth is that M-ITX motherboards aren’t designed to offer buckets of overclocking headroom; if that’s what you’re after, we think you’re better off looking towards some of the more robust micro-ATX boards like the P7H55D-M EVO from ASUS.

Also, care needs to be taken when choosing a processor heatsink for the H55-ITX. Zotac has placed the CPU socket next to the PCIe slot so any heatsink larger than Intel’s may cause interference when installing a video card. This peculiarity prevented us from installing a Coolermaster GeminII S when running with dedicated graphics. However, if you choose to use an i3 and its integrated graphics then this point is moot.

Features such as six onboard SATA ports, wireless-N networking and the ability to support i3, i5 and i7 processors are what ZOTAC really set their focus on. This feature set separates the H55-ITX from every other mini-ITX board on the market. Performance from the bundled wireless adapter was great as well. We measured file transfer speeds to be several times faster than the 802.11g cards bundled in Zotac’s earlier motherboards.

Out of the box, the H55-ITX was quick to POST and the BIOS was easy to navigate. The on-board sound, Ethernet and USB ports worked correctly. Overall, system stability was rock solid even while overclocking. The only time the board failed to POST was when the RAM was configured to work at 1600MHz, a frequency not supported by the i3 530. The H55-ITX wasn’t bundled with any additional software outside of the drivers CD. Price wise the H55-ITX is competitive with other fully featured mini-ITX motherboards, going for around $150 shipped. Mini-ITX motherboards come with a price premium and are generally more expensive than their similarly equipped micro-ATX counterparts.

Due to an innovative design, a potential for miniscule power consumption and the fact that the H55-ITX is currently the only mini-ITX motherboard on the market that supports the Core i3’s integrated graphics, the ZOTAC H55-ITX WiFi has no competition for the time being. If you've been waiting for a feature-filled mini-ITX Clarkdale motherboard, Zotac appears to have delivered.