The Board

Now to the board itself. Being an ITX layout there isn't much room for interpretation. The board measures 17x17cm using a 6 layer black PCB. On the right hand side of the board there is the 24-pin ATX power connector sitting behind the two DDR2 memory slots on the board. The 4-pin ATX power connector for the CPU is located behind the rear I/O ports, keeping the cables away from the CPU area as much as possible.

The CPU socket for such as small board is relatively clean, allowing large copper blocks to be installed. The CPU gets its power supplied though a 4 phase voltage regulation system using solid state components.

Now it's down to the rear I/O ports. ZOTAC has done an even better job on this board than any previous ITX offering. First off, this board follows from what ASUS has started. There is only one PS/2 port which is a Keyboard/Mouse port and there are two USB ports directly below it. There are two video ports; a CRT and DVI port that supports both DVI and HDMI output through he supplied converter. There is also displayport located between the USB/PS/2 towers and the RCA/Toslink audio ports. That's right, there is digital audio-out on this board as well. Lastly, there are six stereo audio ports included on this board as well as an eSATA port; finally eSATA makes its appearance on ITX!

Now to the board's expansion and being ITX there is only one slot available, but on this board it's a PCIe x16 slot that supports a graphics card for Hybrid SLI or any other PCIe based expansion card on the market if you are happy with sticking to the board's own graphics support.