Zotac H55-ITX Review - The World's First mini-ITX H55 Motherboard
by Joshua Youngberg on February 28, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
damianrobertjones - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
InstallWindows 7 Pro, latest flash installed, IE 8
Etern205 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I've been on this site for years and have not encounter what you're getting.Voo - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
Never happened to me, you're sure it's not something nasty on your PC? Wouldn't be the first of its kind..JarredWalton - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
It does sound more like an infection rather than one of our ads, though I could be wrong. If you can provide specific details on the advertisement, that would be helpful. (Not that I have nothing to do with ads, but I could at least pass the information along to the appropriate person.)Assuming it's an infection (very possibly a rootkit), here are a few suggestions:
1) http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php">Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
2) http://download.cnet.com/Ad-Aware-Free-Anti-Malwar...">Ad-Aware Free
3) http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search-amp-Destroy...">Spybot Search & Destroy
If you run those and get an infection, and still have issues after cleaning, you might need to try http://www.gmer.net/">GMER.exe... there's a particularly nasty rootkit going around right now that infects your ATAPI.SYS file, and GMER.EXE will fix that one. I don't recommend this as a first option, though, as it's not user friendly and can be a powerful (re: dangerous) tool in the hands of an inexperienced user.
/Tangent.
damianrobertjones - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
It's always the user hey...Tomshardware has recently been diverting my laptop to a malware page so... I asked a forum to check and it happened to them. I then created a clean vm, updated, installed AV, bam, same thing.
New machine out of a box, the only machine on the connection, updated, AV, bam... re-direction.
Please resolve your banner situation and I've already sent a mail to Toms with no response. It's not always the users
The0ne - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Toms is not a good site to go to nowadays, especially if you don't have the capability to turn scripts off! If you do use some sort of script blocking plugin, take a look at all the fcking junk that Toms has on their site. Truly amazing and disgusting. Mind you I'm not saying they're bad, just a lot of junk the visitor aren't aware of.banthespam - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
I believe FaaR is correct. I was browsing over pc.ign.com and got the exact same page (obvious ad-redirect to malware). So I googled the malware url and found this page. First time I brought it up, it redirected me to the malware site. But it's a one time thing. I tried to reload, clear cache cookies and so on, could never get the malware site again. They're hidding it well. There's probably even some random stuff thrown in so you never know when it'll brought up.And yes, just in case, I did scan my comp, absolutly nothing was found. I am not running as administrator thus cannot be infected by rootkits.
SilthDraeth - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Not running as admin is definitely safer than running as admin, but it does not make you immune to being infected by rootkits.PianoManDan - Saturday, July 9, 2011 - link
I know this topic is a bit old, but I've just come across it as I'm looking into this board as a change to my current setup.Firstly, my use is quite different, and a bit specialist. Hopefully, even though this topic is over a year old, someone will be able to offer some advice.
My PC is used for Mobile Audio work, as well as a home server with multiple virtual machines. I would like to take advantage of my current equipment and also use it as a relatively decent gaming machine.
I currently have an i7 870 CPU which I'm using with Gigabyte mATX board. It was in a 2U Rack case (because of my mobile usage), and as the 870 doesn't have on-board graphics, I'm using a Low-Profile ATI 5450 1GB GPU.
I've just switched to a 1U Case, which mounts the GPU horizontally instead, making room for a full size GPU. This does mean though that the GPU and heatsink is on top of some PCI & PCIe Slots on the mATX board.
I'm looking at an ITX board instead so the extra space is available for the HSF on the GPU, plus it means I can hopefully take advantage of a full size, better GPU that will be good for gaming. It can't be dual size though (2 PCI Slots in height). I'm not after anything amazing - but just to comfortably manage modern games with good detail.
So, now you understand my usage, my questions are:
Can this board handle relatively decent gaming?
What GPU would you recommend without being overkill for this MB?
Long-winded I know - but sometimes you need to know the uses before you can comment and make a suitable recommendation. I appreciate any help anyone can offer.