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
Performance summary
App and Gaming Performance
We found that the H55-ITX performs comparably to the other H55/P55 motherboards on the market during system benchmarking.
Power Consumption
For our system power consumption tests we measure the watts being pulled out from the wall socket by the entire system. Keep in mind that power consumption at the wall can vary for a specific system based on the efficiency of the power supply being used. For these tests every power saving option in the BIOSes were turned on.
The Zotac H55-ITX put down some of the lowest idle power consumption numbers that I have ever recorded on a desktop. System consumption under 100% CPU load was very mild as well. Numbers this low would make the H55-ITX ideal for a system that is rarely shutdown, like a HTPC.
Audio Latency
During our battery of tests we also measure DPC latency. This will be of particular interest to the audiophiles of the world.
Overclocking
While testing the H55-ITX we decided to take a different turn for the overclocking segment. Instead of pushing the board to its limits in order to find its maximum frequencies we chose to find the perfect balance between speed and voltage. The fact that the VRM for CPU Vcore is very restricted and that the BIOS offered no adjustment for CPU VTT voltage helped point us in this direction.
To reach our final overclock on our i3 530 I simply raised the Bclock to 150, lowered the Vcore to the default, 1.20V, minus .025V and adjusted the Vdimm to 1.65V. 1.175V was the lowest Vcore we could use to maintain a 150 Bclock. All other available voltages were untouched. For system memory the timings were manually set to 9-9-9-24-72 and the frequency was set at 1500MHz. On a side note, I ran this system in a Silverstone SG06 and using the factory Intel heatsink core temperatures rarely got above 50 degrees Celsius.
We chose not to overclock the i7 860 to avoid any risk to the ZOTAC motherboards power circuitry. The H55-ITX simply wasn't designed to power a heavily overclocked quad core.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
mindless1 - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
The real question is why not. It's always amusing when some short-sighted person comes along and suggests a motherboard should be stripped of every possible feature that particular individual doesn't want to use, as if there is some gain in removing legacy features.More features mean a wider customer base, more sales, lower per unit cost.
MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I think one PS/2 for keyboard is fine. It's not as if this board is lacking in USB ports. I'd say that by now most people use USB mice at least so no PS/2 mouse port shouldn't be a complaint.therealnickdanger - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I still use an old AT-plug keyboard (with PS/2 adapter). It's made of metal and heavy plastic and weighs about 7 lbs and you can hear me typing on it from anywhere in the house.I love that thing.
JonnyDough - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
On the other hand if you got used to a softer quieter keyboard you could annoy people less and still love typing! :) Practice makes perfect. Old habits are tough to break, but sometimes worth the effort. i.e. smoking?vol7ron - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
I know it's a lot of work, but you guys have been making great strides with the Bench area. Is it possible to get gpu, memory, and motherboards on there too?Thanks,
vol7ron
Saosin - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
Does it undervolt and/or underclock? And if that's the case; What's the range and how small are the V steps?ScavengerLX - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
The base clock can be dropped down to 100MHz and Vcore can be reduced to .10V under the default voltage. Hope that helps.Joshua
hybrid2d4x4 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Thanks for the info. -0.1V is pretty weak, but I guess it's better than nothing.jigglywiggly - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
Looks like a solid motherboard, too bad I have no use for a htpc.oc3an - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link
On Page 4:"An abundance of on-board SATA ports are provided by the P55 chipset."
I'm pretty sure it's H55.
-Patrick