Zotac Zbox AD04 Plus AMD E-450 APU Mini PC Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,567 words · ~7 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of something that's actually pretty cool. This is the
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Zotac Zbox 804 Plus. So, it's got their
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usual chassis, but there's some aspects
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of this particular little mini PC that are not very usual at all. It comes with
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Bluetooth gigabit LAN 802.11n. So, that is N wireless, a
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remote control, and a vase mount. The configuration that I've got here has a
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320 gig hard drive and two gigs of memory. Although you can buy it as a
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barebones, which doesn't come with a hard drive or RAM, obviously at a
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cheaper price, and you can put in whatever you want. So, you can build yourself a very silent, very high
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performance, and more on that later. Mini PC for a very reasonable budget. It
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also doesn't come with an operating system, so you're free to choose your own. Whether you want to go with Windows
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7 Home Premium Professional, or whatever else the case may be. They don't lock
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you in that way or force you to buy a more expensive premium skew in order to
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get a better operating system. So, that's something that's really convenient. Let's have a look at the
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overall specs first. So, this uses the AMD E450 APU, which has two cores
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running at 1.65 GHz, as well as an AMD
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6000 series 6320 graphics core built
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into the APU itself. So, an APU is kind of like a CPU and a GPU on one die.
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Moving on, we've got two uh two gigs of memory included. There are two sodium
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spot slots available. It supports one 2 and 12 in hard drive or SSD with the 320
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gig drive included. Anything without plus in the part number is a bare bones,
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just so you guys know. Gigabit LAN 802.11n Bluetooth 3.0. It has an SDHC
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slot that also supports memory stick if you actually still use that. Onboard 8
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channel digital audio is uh output via
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HDMI or optical spitiff. Okay. IO
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dimensions. We'll get into that later. Cool. There's a QR code. We'll talk
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about that after. And since we're going to open this thing, none of this is very
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relevant. So, let's get this baby opened
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up. I don't know if you guys remember, but I did a full NCX tech tips episode
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on one of Zotac's mini PCs, which was just beastly. The thing was running some
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serious high bit rate MKVS
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uh using XBMC. Very, very robust little system.
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We've got a bunch of pieces here. You know what? I'm going to actually open
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these up off camera. So, here we are. One thing that we do have to do is
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install the batteries in the remote, which is a fairly simple process, as you
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guys can see. Here I am doing it now. I'm doing it. I'm doing it now. You
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know, the guys on the local radio station, Team 1040, the uh the sports
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radio station, are just they're doing like this thing. It's like a March
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Madness themed, like basketball themed thing where they're taking iconic TV
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characters and then they have like brackets where they come down down down
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to a finals and then they're they're going to have someone win and they're having the uh the listeners vote and
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they're like floored every time Basil Faulty wins a bracket because apparently
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none of them understand the humor of Faulty Towers which just irked me this
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morning cuz they were like, "Oh, it's some British show. There were only 12 episodes." Yes, 12 episodes of the
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purest comedy gold that ever existed. Anyway, moving on. Uh, here is the media
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center remote that is included. It has all of your usual suspects in terms of
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programmable keys, numbers, and mute buttons and navigation keys and all that
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good stuff. Next, we have the included power cord, four included screws, more
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on those later, as well as the IR receiver. So the reason this comes on a
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really long cord that is more than one Linus arms span in length is because it
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can be easily positioned like plugged into the uh the Zbox itself and then
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positioned somewhere discreet and convenient so that the remote will be
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able to hit it. It would hit that thing. Okay. Then
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we have an antenna and a little mounting
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piece here, which we'll do more on later. As well
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as a warranty terms thing. So, in the
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Oh, look at that. In the EU, they get two years. I think that's by law.
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Everywhere else is one year. Driver installation DVD, users manual, as well
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as uh quick start guide. Now, the unit
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itself. So, remember guys, this is an E450. That means it is capable of
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DirectX11 gaming in games like uh Dirt
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3, for example, where they're not super super demanding, but they are DirectX11.
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So, more on that in a moment here. Let's uh let's do the unit itself
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here. Very shiny. ERP ready, evidently.
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There's our cooling fan right there. Can you guys see that at all? There's a
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little aluminum heat sink under it. I don't know if you're going to be able to
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see that. That's okay. There's a cooling fan in there. You guys will have to take my word for it. We also have four rubber
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feet. So, if you want to use it sitting down, you would put it this way. And as
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like a media PC box, that's probably how I would set it up. You can decide which
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way is the front. So, there's an exhaust vent here with a front USB 2. On this
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side, there's audio. Uh, so that's headphones, microphone, SD slot, USB 2,
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wireless LAN indicator, drive indicator, power
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button. Okay, so that's probably the front. Then moving on to this side, we
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got a couple screws. So that's to open up the chassis as well as more
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ventilation holes. And finally on this side, this is what I would consider to be the back. Yeah. Yeah, this is the
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back. So there's the wireless antenna, which we
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can derp plug
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in if I can. Oh, it's like springloaded. Neat.
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Okay, there we go. wireless antenna, USB 3, gigabit Ethernet, two more USB 2,
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DisplayPort out. That's cool. That's uh that's a function of the AMD Radeon
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graphics on board. HDMI as well as optical audio out. And finally, the
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power in. It also has a power indicator on the top. That
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orange ring does glow. But check this out. This is the kind of thing Zotac
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thought of. You can turn it off in the BIOS if you have it in a room where, for
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example, maybe it's a media PC and you don't want like disturbing random orange
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glows coming out of your PC. Turn it off. No problem. And then it just looks
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the way it does when it's powered off right now. Other than a small glow from
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the power button. Yeah, that is USB 2. Sorry, I was just checking that, guys.
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So, okay. Right. What other options do we have for mounting? So, you guys saw
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this funky thing right here. That is so that you can mount uh so that you can
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mount it on the base station, which hopefully I can figure out how to
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do. There we go. Slide that into place. That is
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another way that you can configure it. Finally, and it comes with everything
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you need in the box. You can do it this
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way. Check this out. It comes with a
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vase mount. So, all you have to do is clip the unit in. And I'll see if I can
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remember how it Yeah, there we go. You can find the guides here. So, you see
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these indents right here and right
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here. You just clip the unit in like
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this. And you mount the plastic piece.
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Hold on. That opens up the clips. So, you mount the plastic piece to the back
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of your TV or monitor or maybe you're using this at a POS terminal in a store,
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something where you you don't want like a huge PC next to it. You screw this
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into the back with those screws that I said I'd tell you more about later.
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They're stuck to something. Sorry, guys. And then you clip the PC in just like
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this, like I kind of showed you already, but
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whatever. And there you go. Just like that. No big deal, right? You have
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access to all of your important IO, including that top USB 2
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port. And you have a nice little lowprofile PC. You don't need a wire for
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networking cuz it has built-in wireless as well as built-in Bluetooth. And I
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think that pretty much covers it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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ever popular Zotac 804. Don't forget to
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