Package and Contents

Compared to the Albatron board that we recently tested, the box for the Albatron board was slightly smaller, though not by a whole lot. The standard ZOTAC colour scheme of orange and black is used here; the art work on the front is somewhat eye catching, which was quite nice. On the front the actual board model number is stickered onto the box.

On the back there we see there is only some basic marketing info on the company; nothing really specific about the board itself and with no pictures of the board it's an in-the-dark experience here.

ZOTAC has done a good job when it comes to the documentation. There are two user manuals; the orange and black one is for the board itself which contains board layout, driver support and BIOS setup, whilst the second manual is for the wireless USB module that connects to a spare USB header on the board. The driver DVD included has Windows XP and Vista drivers in 32-bit and 64-bit variants. However, there are no Linux drivers, but NVIDIA does have drivers on their website for this chipset, though it would have been nice to have them on the CD as well.

Moving onto the accessories bundle, ZOTAC has given a little bit more than we got with the Albatron board. You get the same single IDE cable, however, ZOTAC has rounded the cable for you. Being in a Mini-ITX case, rounded cables are great to help keep the clutter down. You also get a sleeved SATA power splitter as well as a single SATA data cable, which is a bit disappointing as there are two SATA ports to be used. But I guess it can be argued, how many drives can you fit into a Mini-ITX case?

Since the board doesn't have a native HDMI port, a DVI to HDMI converter is included for you to connect the board to a HDMI compatible TV or LCD. However, you have to give up the DVI port to do it, but that's not a big deal. To give the board its WiFi capabilities ZOTAC includes a small USB based VIA Wireless Network controller that sits between the last USB tower and the audio ports which then pokes out the rear I/O shield.