Zotac ZBOX HD-ID40-U Atom ION Barebones Nettop Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,352 words · ~6 min read
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Now, this is something that I've been meaning to take a look at for a while. This is the Zotac Zbox or Zbox,
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whichever you'd prefer. Personally, I'm not fussy. And this has been quite
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popular for a while because it is a
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barebones all-in-one net top. So, there
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isn't there aren't many other companies on the market these days that are making
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a net top that is actually completely customizable and doesn't come with the
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things that most people would want to change. like say for example memory,
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hard drive and OS. So that's pretty much the only things they haven't included
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and that gives you a lot of flexibility. Like if you want to build sort of an
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ultimate performance nettop, then you could throw in a bunch of RAM, throw in
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an SSD drive and then throw, you know, Windows 7 on there and all of a sudden
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you've got a great little config. If you decide you don't want that, you can
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throw in like a the cheapest possible 2 and 1/2 in drive, the least possible
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amount of RAM, and that's an optimal grandma PC. you know, install an old
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copy of XP that you have lying around and great, boom, there you go. It's like
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the cheapest possible thing that way. So, it gives you a lot of flexibility.
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This particular one is their is part of their newest generation of products. So,
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this is the HD ID40U. Yeah, their their model names
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aren't really all that uh remembering exactly what they are friendly, but
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here, let's go through exactly what is included here. So, it's the Atom D525.
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So, it's a dual core 1.8 GHz Intel Atom processor. It has the next generation
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which is well I guess the second generation NVIDIA I ion chipset with 512
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megs of DDR3 graphics memory. Has uh two
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DDR2 expansion slots. One 2 and 1/2 in
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hard drive slot that is a SATA 3 GB per
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second gigabit LAN wireless N card
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reader. It also has ESATA. I don't see
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that. Oh yeah, there's the ESATA. So there's all the included IO HDMI as well
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as DVI. You can get VGA with a dongle. And then you've got 8 channel digital
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audio included. It is extremely silent. I have personally validated this.
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Cameraman's grandpa actually built a PC around the Zbox. Uh guess that was a
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couple months ago and he was just super impressed with how fast it was for what
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he needed, which is basically just like, you know, browsing the internet,
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watching a couple videos, you know, just
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sort of no big deal stuff. But also with how quiet it was, it makes almost no
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noise. And this is even in comparison to other nettops on the market. It's fully
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1080p capable, which is here. Okay. And
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it will play 1080p video when I built one around this. I I did actually I
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built it for him. So I did test that as well. It includes a visa mount and
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everything else here. I think we've covered already. Uh there's a little
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explanation of that which I'll leave there while we go through the packaging
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itself. So, the first thing we find in the package is a power cable. So, you're
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going to notice that this looks an awful lot like a notebook power adapter. You
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got your power brick, you got your little DC plug, and then you've got an
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AC cord that goes into it. The reason is that the inside of the Zbox is an awful
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lot like a netbook. The only difference is that it doesn't have a
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screen. I guess there's probably some other differences, but I'm not going to
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get too far into that. So, in Canada,
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here we go. with a one-year warranty on the Zbox. We have a driver installation
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CD. So, here I'm going to refine my throw away the CD um suggestion to
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download the LAN drivers off the CD and
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then throw it away and then download the rest of the newest ones off of the Zotac
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or the uh the OEM website because remember for things like audio chipsets,
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you can download them directly from the OEM that makes the chip. Here is a
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user's manual. Here's a quick start guide, which presumably includes things
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like where to plug stuff into. You know what it looks like? It doesn't include
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anything about upgrading the RAM and hard drive. So, that's kind of
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interesting. I wonder if that's in the manual. I mean, is the assumption that
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if you've gotten this far, you probably know how to do that already or what. Ah,
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here we go. Yeah, so it does include instructions for customizing the Zbox.
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Okay, what do we find in the other side? In the other side, we find a DV uh DVI
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to VGA adapter, some mounting screws,
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which I guess we'll need for something, as well as a little stand if you want to
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have it sit on your desk like
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that. So, it's time to play. Yeah, you
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won't be playing too much on this particular one unless it's like videos
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and stuff. Not really uh not really a gaming machine, Intel adamant. Okay, so
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here we go. It comes pre-attached to its little vasa mount. Visa visa, I don't
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know. Okay, so you just press that little switch, take that off, no
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problem. Oh, look, it even includes like ventilation built
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in. Okay, so we'll have a look. Wow, it's really light actually without a uh
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without a drive in it. Makes an enormous difference. You'd be surprised. Okay, so
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on the front we have ESATA 1 2 3 4 USB 2.0. That's a gigabit LAN, DVI, HDMI.
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That is optical digital audio out as well as our power input. Up on the top,
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we have ventilation. So, you can clearly see the heat sink here that is cooling
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the CPU as well as the NVIDIA ion chipset. That's where your exhaust is
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going to go. So, we've got another USB port here. Conveniently located. Oh, there's
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rubber feet here. So, you can actually put it down this way. So, that's the way
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you'd use it as a desktop. So, there's the front. This is the way you'd use it
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if you put it on the stand. And then if you obviously attach the vase mount,
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then you put it on the back of a monitor. On the front, you can see we've
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got a power switch as well as a couple activity LEDs for wireless as well as
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presumably the hard drive. We have another USB port, so it's a total of six
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and an SD card reader. We have a microphone port as well as a headphone
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port. That's all you're going to get for analog audio. So unless you want to run
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digital, you're only going to get uh 2.0 0 or I guess you could run 2.1 if you
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had a built-in subwoofer. Uh, so you're only going to get two channels
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out. I guess that's pretty much everything there is to say about it. So,
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basically, you need RAM, drive, and OS,
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and you are ready to go. So, here's how it works on the back of an LCD. I
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promised you guys I'd show that. Oh, looks like you can also wall mount it. That's kind of neat. Okay, so thank you
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for checking out my unboxing of the Zbox. And don't forget to subscribe to
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Linus Tech Tips and leave a comment criticizing how I'm saying this letter
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wrong because everyone seems to do that.