NEW Version of Zotac H55ITX w/ USB 3.0 Coming Soon

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RavenZero

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 1, 2006
Messages
498
I just saw yesterday that Zotac is coming out with a new mini-ITX to answer the Gigabyte USB3 board that is out:

MaximumPC.com Link

HotHardware.com Link

From Maxumum PC's article:

"Zotac seems to have squeezed everything it could onto a board with limited real estate. Builders will find two DIMM slots with support for up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, six SATA 3.0Gb/s ports, one eSATA port, two USB 3.0 ports, a whopping 10 USB 2.0 ports (six on the back, 4 via pin header), a single PCI-Express 2.0 slot, HDMI and DVI, and other odds and ends.

No word yet on when this will ship or for how much."

I haven't been a big fan of Zotac boards since all the isses with the 9300 ITX wake/sleep etc., but it's cool to see the competition heat up like this in the mini ITX space. If only we could lure ASUS and MSI into the fray with more high end ITX boards... SATA 6GB anyone? ;)
 
Until they can fix that issue with their BIOS updates killing their H55 ITX board, I wouldn't touch it. They should implement something like Gigabyte's dual BIOS to prevent against bad BIOS flashes. I trashed three of their H55-ITX boards trying to update the BIOS.
 
The VRM heatsinks are interesting. I'm surprised they're not more common in this format, they're actually useful here in the land of limited airflow.
 
I'll be keeping an eye out for it and reviews on it. I was planning on getting the Gigabyte but the additional SATA ports plus heatsinks on the MOSFETs? Pretty promising to me.

I guess as long as it's a known issue of BIOS updates causing problems as a fix I could just not update the BIOS, in a worst-case scenario.
 
RavenZero said:
I just saw yesterday that Zotac is coming out with a new mini-ITX to answer the Gigabyte USB3 board that is out:
Click to expand...
Is Zotac anything really an "answer" to Gigabyte? Had it been from Asus or MSI or something, yeah sure, but Zotac? I mean I'm not trying to hate on Zotac here or anything but I've heard a lot of bad things about them. And you can add some to that list, from this very thread, lol...

RavenZero said:
I haven't been a big fan of Zotac boards since all the isses with the 9300 ITX wake/sleep etc.,
Click to expand...

IsLNdbOi said:
Until they can fix that issue with their BIOS updates killing their H55 ITX board, I wouldn't touch it.
Click to expand...

I think it's going to take a lot more than adding USB3 for them to garner consideration from a lot of people. I'm sure there are happy customers, but I just don't trust them myself.
 
I thought the 9300 was considered a good board. I didn't look much in to it though since at the time I wasn't considering ITX.
 
It's a good board but not perfect and many customers are bitter about the little problems it had
 
I think that your bad experiences are clouding your evaluation of the actual reach of their ITX products. I can guarantee you that they have sold more mini-ITX boards for mid to high-end processors than any of the competition so far--and possibly a number of Ion-ITX boards to be some serious competition for Intel (though they're still using Intel processors). It is, in fact, how they have made such a big name for themselves in the SFF world over the last couple of years. There have been bad experiences, but let's not pretend that they are small players when they really are not--especially considering the fact that they play very well in the niche markets of video cards, SFF boards and PCs. They are BIG players in having helped bring mini-ITX systems into the mainstream of the enthusiast market. The huge number of people who own Zotac mini-ITX boards out there should be apparent to you just from the number of posts on this very board alone.

Gigabyte and, in an even more telling move, DFI joined the mini-ITX battle because they see that they are losing a potential market that Zotac has basically had all to itself for the last 2 years. Intel had already started to make moves in this market but lacked the bios tweaks and some of the HTPC functionality with their G45 product to fully compete in a market that's becoming more and more enthusiast dominated. They've made more serious moves with their latest H55 and H57 boards.

More and more people are interested in building more powerful, smaller computers using high-end and mainstream memory, processors and graphics cards than ever before. Shuttle can take credit for starting it but their lack of customizable options for cases, cooling and power supplies left a giant hole open that Zotac and a couple of smart case manufacturers have been able to pretty much own for the last 2 years. I can name maybe 1 or 2 in every 10 people that I know who would now rather build a Shuttle or a micro-ATX gaming rig or server who would not rather build a mini-ITX based system

Yes--Gigabyte, DFI and soon others will want to try and grab as much of that market share as they can if a lot of enthusiasts are building Mini-ITX systems now using Zotac boards instead of the micro-ATX systems that were being built 2 or 3 years ago. Even Asus jumped in to play against Zotac in the Ion-ITX space last year. And if you don't think that was to grab some of the market that they could see Zotac in particular was building, you have to have blinders on...

WindowsRevengeII said:
Is Zotac anything really an "answer" to Gigabyte? Had it been from Asus or MSI or something, yeah sure, but Zotac? I mean I'm not trying to hate on Zotac here or anything but I've heard a lot of bad things about them. And you can add some to that list, from this very thread, lol...

I think it's going to take a lot more than adding USB3 for them to garner consideration from a lot of people. I'm sure there are happy customers, but I just don't trust them myself.
Click to expand...
 
I have the first version of the Zotac 9300 itx board that came out. I'm still currently using it as my HTPC. Even though it has it's sleep issues, I've been happy with it. Play's anything I throw at it with no stuttering at all. There has been more problem's finding a decent case, as lian-li appears to be the only people who know what they are doing in that aspect. Nothing is ever perfect the first time around. I think Zotac knows this, and keeps looking at ways to improve there boards. I would gladly buy it them again, when I downsize my m-itx board. I love not having a big cause and little room taken on my desk. If they come up with a sli version. I'll be jumping all over that one too.
 
I'd stay away from Zotac to be honest. They remind me of Jetway back in mATX's first days...kinda weak products but normally the first out there.
 
Steeeeve said:
I'd stay away from Zotac to be honest. They remind me of Jetway back in mATX's first days...kinda weak products but normally the first out there.
Click to expand...

This from past experience or just your opinion? Cause there current line up kills and there customer support is way better than Jetway ever was
 
bwoody2016 said:
This from past experience or just your opinion? Cause there current line up kills and there customer support is way better than Jetway ever was
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This is from past experience and I guess it is my opinion as well. It's just not an enthusiast board is what I'm saying.
 
RavenZero said:
I think that your bad experiences are clouding your evaluation of the actual reach of their ITX products. I can guarantee you that they have sold more mini-ITX boards for mid to high-end processors than any of the competition so far--and possibly a number of Ion-ITX boards to be some serious competition for Intel (though they're still using Intel processors).
Click to expand...
My bad experiences? (You quoted me.) But I haven't had any? :confused: I was just going off of everything I've read about them--reviews, forum posts, etc.

As for selling lots, that doesn't mean a thing. For example, the Toyota Corolla is the best selling car worldwide for the last x# of years, but it's also one of the biggest POS on the road today as well. In fact the current generation car is so bad it has no business even being on the road. But I digress...

The point is, just because something is popular or sells a lot, doesn't mean it's good. It could be good, sure, but it's not necessarily the case.

RavenZero said:
There have been bad experiences, but let's not pretend that they are small players when they really are not--especially considering the fact that they play very well in the niche markets of video cards, SFF boards and PCs. They are BIG players in having helped bring mini-ITX systems into the mainstream of the enthusiast market.
Click to expand...
There I would agree and I'm not sure I ever said anything about them being "big" or "small" players. I just said I don't trust them.

RavenZero said:
The huge number of people who own Zotac mini-ITX boards out there should be apparent to you just from the number of posts on this very board alone.
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Sure, but again that's not my concern or comment.

RavenZero said:
Gigabyte and, in an even more telling move, DFI joined the mini-ITX battle because they see that they are losing a potential market that Zotac has basically had all to itself for the last 2 years. Intel had already started to make moves in this market but lacked the bios tweaks and some of the HTPC functionality with their G45 product to fully compete in a market that's becoming more and more enthusiast dominated. They've made more serious moves with their latest H55 and H57 boards.
Click to expand...
True, and sure we might thank Zotac as the competition for upping the ante.

RavenZero said:
Yes--Gigabyte, DFI and soon others will want to try and grab as much of that market share as they can if a lot of enthusiasts are building Mini-ITX systems now using Zotac boards instead of the micro-ATX systems that were being built 2 or 3 years ago. Even Asus jumped in to play against Zotac in the Ion-ITX space last year. And if you don't think that was to grab some of the market that they could see Zotac in particular was building, you have to have blinders on...
Click to expand...
Again, sure. And I didn't say anything you are implying, nor to I have "blinders on". Either you quoted the wrong person or you're just jumping to conclusions about what I said. I said *I* don't trust Zotac (and from that I wouldn't buy a Zotac board at this point in time). Whether they've sold a hundred or a zillion boards, I really couldn't care less. I don't trust them and that's that. I also said that there are a relatively large number of people that say "stay away" from them (or something along those lines). To change their opinion (i.e. not only mine), it's going to take more than USB3 to do that. That's all I said; and, IMO, that's the truth of the situation.
 
WindowsRevengeII said:
Is Zotac anything really an "answer" to Gigabyte? Had it been from Asus or MSI or something, yeah sure, but Zotac? I mean I'm not trying to hate on Zotac here or anything but I've heard a lot of bad things about them. And you can add some to that list, from this very thread, lol...

I think it's going to take a lot more than adding USB3 for them to garner consideration from a lot of people. I'm sure there are happy customers, but I just don't trust them myself.
Click to expand...

I will quote your original statement AGAIN. If this doesn't imply that you don't think that anything Zotac produces can "answer" or even challenge something produced by Gigabyte, then I'm really at a loss when trying to communicate with you...

I'll stand by my original statement that says that they are trying to answer the actual newcomer to the decent ITX motherboard space who is in fact Gigabyte. Zotac had a first iteration of this board out that didn't have USB3. Now that Gigabyte entered the fray with a USB3 H55 ITX board, Zotac felt the need to answer back by adding the USB 3.0 feature to their product. That was entirely the point in my original post. I even stated that it would be great if those of us who appreciate nicer ITX boards could lure Asus and MSI into this battle as well--then we will really have some good competition going. That's all.
 
I'll add to this that I've had 3 Gigabyte boards that have actually flat-out died on me--including my last DS3 board that had its chipset overheat and fry the surrounding components. There have been plenty of issues with Gigabyte that have forced them to make running changes to their ATX and micro ATX boards as well. Sound familiar? I would so much rather have a sleep/suspend issue on my board than have a motherboard flat out die because of poor cooling design as Gigabyte has been notorious for--cough, cough (780g!) cough, cough--for a few years now. They've improved their reputation since then, but we are only a couple of years removed from those boards.

But, you know, I didn't even mention anything about that in the original post because it wasn't really relevant. I was just passing on info about the coming of a new product for us ITX builders.
 
RavenZero said:
I will quote your original statement AGAIN. If this doesn't imply that you don't think that anything Zotac produces can "answer" or even challenge something produced by Gigabyte, then I'm really at a loss when trying to communicate with you...

I'll stand by my original statement that says that they are trying to answer the actual newcomer to the decent ITX motherboard space who is in fact Gigabyte. Zotac had a first iteration of this board out that didn't have USB3. Now that Gigabyte entered the fray with a USB3 H55 ITX board, Zotac felt the need to answer back by adding the USB 3.0 feature to their product. That was entirely the point in my original post. I even stated that it would be great if those of us who appreciate nicer ITX boards could lure Asus and MSI into this battle as well--then we will really have some good competition going. That's all.
Click to expand...

It's not that ASUS and Foxconn haven't been in the mITX/DTX market, but a majority of their products are not bought directly by consumers - they are bought by large system integrators like HP. HP's S3000 slimline series used ONLY DTX motherboards from ASUS, and the slimline is no faint, either. It has PCIe16 slot along with a secondary slot, internal WiFi, standard (I find this funny, lol - al of them used LGA775 HSF mounting holes, even the AM2/AM2+ sockets) HSF mounts, normal desktop RAM, etc.

I think we even have a rather lengthy thread on this "the highly rated HP slimline thread" at [H].

But you are right, I really believe, without Zotac leading the way, the mITX market would of been much, much slower to bring to us consumers.
 
RavenZero said:
I'll add to this that I've had 3 Gigabyte boards that have actually flat-out died on me--including my last DS3 board that had its chipset overheat and fry the surrounding components. There have been plenty of issues with Gigabyte that have forced them to make running changes to their ATX and micro ATX boards as well. Sound familiar? I would so much rather have a sleep/suspend issue on my board than have a motherboard flat out die because of poor cooling design as Gigabyte has been notorious for--cough, cough (780g!) cough, cough--for a few years now. They've improved their reputation since then, but we are only a couple of years removed from those boards.

But, you know, I didn't even mention anything about that in the original post because it wasn't really relevant. I was just passing on info about the coming of a new product for us ITX builders.
Click to expand...

Actually, those aren't mITX boards. That is Gigabyte's mATX/ATX line. Zotac's mITX boards have been dying because of poor BIOS update implementation, in addition to having s3/resume issues, USB power sleep issues, etc.

Why do I know? I used to own a G-E 9300, after waiting out the earlier revisions.
 
jeremyshaw said:
It's not that ASUS and Foxconn haven't been in the mITX/DTX market, but a majority of their products are not bought directly by consumers - they are bought by large system integrators like HP. HP's S3000 slimline series used ONLY DTX motherboards from ASUS, and the slimline is no faint, either. It has PCIe16 slot along with a secondary slot, internal WiFi, standard (I find this funny, lol - al of them used LGA775 HSF mounting holes, even the AM2/AM2+ sockets) HSF mounts, normal desktop RAM, etc.

I think we even have a rather lengthy thread on this "the highly rated HP slimline thread" at [H].

But you are right, I really believe, without Zotac leading the way, the mITX market would of been much, much slower to bring to us consumers.
Click to expand...

That's true, Jeremy. I was really talking about products directly available to system builders/enthusiasts like us.
 
jeremyshaw said:
Actually, those aren't mITX boards. That is Gigabyte's mATX/ATX line. Zotac's mITX boards have been dying because of poor BIOS update implementation, in addition to having s3/resume issues, USB power sleep issues, etc.

Why do I know? I used to own a G-E 9300, after waiting out the earlier revisions.
Click to expand...

Yep, I had one of the earlier ones. That's why I said that I was no fan of Zotac in my first post. I had the same issues, but the board didn't die on me. It just wouldn't wake up if it went to sleep. It was a gaming system though with a 4770 in an SG05 case, so the wake/suspend issue wasn't that important...
 
I'm still interested in seeing how this Zotac board turns out. I'm a little ways away from getting the rest of the components for my ITX build, so I have some time to see how all this plays out. I don't generally use sleep/resume on my computers (personal habit I guess.. I just leave them running or turn them fully off besides in Linux sleep/resume usually has issues anyway in my experience) but that's just my usage.
 
RavenZero said:
Yep, I had one of the earlier ones. That's why I said that I was no fan of Zotac in my first post. I had the same issues, but the board didn't die on me. It just wouldn't wake up if it went to sleep. It was a gaming system though with a 4770 in an SG05 case, so the wake/suspend issue wasn't that important...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I didn't really care since I wasn't going to use mine for a HTPC, but OCD prevented me from getting one that had "issues," lol :p
 
mrmylanman said:
I'm still interested in seeing how this Zotac board turns out. I'm a little ways away from getting the rest of the components for my ITX build, so I have some time to see how all this plays out. I don't generally use sleep/resume on my computers (personal habit I guess.. I just leave them running or turn them fully off besides in Linux sleep/resume usually has issues anyway in my experience) but that's just my usage.
Click to expand...

There is a new article at spcr:

Zotac H55

My 2 cents: yeah Zotac have been leading the way with miniITX boards (I own a 9300-I-E). We should thank them for that. But at the same time their boards often have problems and/or quirks that can be pretty maddening (like poor BIOS, patchy update procedures, etc...) which made me long for an alternative. Which Gigabyte provided (let's not forget about Intel).
 
I think i am going to build a system with this... and the Silverstone SG07-B

What HSF would fit on here? I dont want it to block the Ram/PCIe
 
The Samuel 17 and the AXP140 seem to be some decent options (maybe not the Samuel 17 as much, since I hear the performance isn't that great).
 
jeremyshaw said:
Funny tidbit, ASUS' and Gigabyte's Taiwan HQ are across the street from each other.

EDIT: both are from Taiwan, too :p
Click to expand...
Ha really? I've long said I believe (as in I have 0 proof) all the motherboards are basically the same design stolen from one another...either that or one plan sold to a bunch of companies. The Qpack for example was duplicated 4-5 times over by different companies (face only). From what I am told they were all basically the same manufacturing plant though.
 
Hm, Newegg changed their style.

And that's how much the original cost at first I believe so that's not too bad I s'pose.
 
For anyone who is curious, I pulled the trigger on this board. I was weighing heavily between it and the Gigabyte but figured I'll give the Zotac a shot because I like the extra features it brings to the table. If I'm not satisfied, I'll just return it and buy the Gigabyte board.

Is there anything in particular anyone wants to know about it? I will be using a Xeon L3426 so all-out overclocking probably won't be on the list, I'll also be using the stock heatsink for a while anyway.

It'll be here Friday.
 
mrmylanman said:
For anyone who is curious, I pulled the trigger on this board. I was weighing heavily between it and the Gigabyte but figured I'll give the Zotac a shot because I like the extra features it brings to the table. If I'm not satisfied, I'll just return it and buy the Gigabyte board.

Is there anything in particular anyone wants to know about it? I will be using a Xeon L3426 so all-out overclocking probably won't be on the list, I'll also be using the stock heatsink for a while anyway.

It'll be here Friday.
Click to expand...

Overclocking.
Undervolting (have they fixed it since the last C-E review?)
VID assigned (SPCR's review had a messed up assigned VID, iirc).
 
Alright will do. Since that is a 45W TDP processor I am interested in VID and undervolting myself so I will be sure to check that out, as I don't wanting it supplying enough power to make it worthless for me to have sprung for an expensive (and slower) CPU for nothing.

Overclocking may not tell much since like I said I'll be using the stock heatsink and that processor only has a normal multiplier of 13 I think, but I might be able to find out how high the base clock can go. I'm hoping somewhat high (maybe 180-200? I know it's asking quite a bit for a mini ITX board) since it has a heatsink over the VRMs.
 
IMG_20100827_180748.jpg


Got the board now.... going to work on tweaking the BIOS in a bit. I might just go for undervolting right now rather than overclocking, given the stock heatsink.
 
mrmylanman said:
Got the board now.... going to work on tweaking the BIOS in a bit. I might just go for undervolting right now rather than overclocking, given the stock heatsink.
Click to expand...

Nice :cool:

Since this is a "comming soon" thread, I think we can request either a thread title renaming, or a new thread, lol :p
 
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