Zotac Z68-ITX Wifi

So with the new bios, are there still any major issues with the Zotec Z68? Turbo boost works as expected? Can overclock properly?
 
Does anyone know if the ESata on the B-E version supports FIS based port switching? Or command based?
 
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echn111 said:
So with the new bios, are there still any major issues with the Zotec Z68? Turbo boost works as expected? Can overclock properly?
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Nope, BIOS is very very very limited, speedtest/eist/c1/ce is always active so will alwys drop to 1.6ghz!
 
I speculate that this is a BIOS thing, but am not sure. All other people using other boards are able to adjust pump/fan speed on either sys fan header or cpu fan header. But I tried both header, no matter which header I use, setting a different value in BIOS won't change fan speed at all. Note that the pump has three-pin connector, so I assume it's non-PWM, still other people were able to control its speed in BIOS even so... Does anyone happen to use a watercooling and try to lower pump speed to eliminate its noise? (Corsair H60...*knocking wood*)
 
My h60's pump is very quiet and I wouldn't run pump speed lower anyways
 
Hey thanks for the info fr500.

It was just a known fix for those pump that makes Hard drive access noise... They tuned it down to 80%-90% or so and mostly report a fix. The fix was also recently approved by corsair employees on their forum, while they originally opposed it...

As I'm staying up the whole night trying to find a solution, the pump is just getting louder and louder. I was going to try to RMA for a replacement, but now I"m really thinking about just returning it.

What speed does your pump run at? Mine runs at 4400RPM or so reading from BIOS. Is your pump more silent than most of your fans? At this time, my pump is much much louder than my biggest case fan...

p.s., it just sounds like a fan rubbing a paper or something...
 
No idea, I have the H60 on a mATX system and I don't remember what header I used, this has one 180mm fan, 2 120mm fans (Silverstone AP120 on the H60) and a 140mm on my Thermaltake Shaman cooled GTX570...and I can hear none over ambient.
 
Sigh... Filed return on H60 thru Amazon. Corsair still haven't responded yet, so I expect a much longer wait for a replacement than for a simple response. Time is the only thing I don't have right now... Hmm money is limited also, or i'll just keep the H60 and crash it mash it into !@#$%^.....

Has anyone experienced any freezing issue after waking the display after the system turn off the display? I set it to turn off display after 15 min. It looks like if I come back say like 20 min, tap on keyboard or move the mouse to turn back on the display, the system freezes, with mouse cursor showing loading state, no response to click anywhere on the screen. By using ctrl+alt+del, I can call up that menu that shows "lock computer", "switch user", "log off", and ect. But I can't click on any of that either. It always had to end up with a hard reset...Nothing significant in the event viewer of win7, and I've troubleshoot all the event, found no relationship between events and the freeze. I concluded that it's probably hardware issue, so I firstly want to check if it's this well-known troublesome board ;p

Anyone?
 
Anyone got a Zotac Z68 ITX "A" version (full DIMM slots and PCI-E x16 2.0 slot) they want to sell me ;). I don't overclock my 2500k anyways so thinking about downsizing from mATX -> mITX
 
Hello guys, help needed urgently!

I just booted my computer this morning, and found the computer won't boot into BIOS! Everything worked fine last night. Here is the description of the issue:

When power switch on PSU is on, but computer turned off, the power LED is solid on, when it shouldn't be... And when I turn on the computer, nothing happens, but fans spin like crazy, which they normally do before booting into Windows. However, my display receives no signal, and on the board, the error LED display "00". I DID A quick search, and found this guy Paraleyes having the same issue (he has 3 dead board in a roll), and raging on both Newegg and Zotac forum. Heck, I should really have listened to him when deciding what board to go...

To supplement, the power LED will stay solid after the computer is turned on, vga fans staying at maximum RPM, no HD activity, no BIOS, green Mobo power light is on, with error 00....And holding power button to shut down the computer isn't working anymore, reset button works. To shut down the computer, have to turn off the switch on PSU.

Do you guys have any idea what error 00 mean? Is it this well known Dead DIMM slot issue?

I'm really pissed off at this point, as it's final time, and I do not have time fiddling around with the computer anymore!

Would appreciate your help guys!
 
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Ye... it's gonna be a long process tho, so I'll probably get a new board first. Time seems to be the only thing I do not have right now :(

Man you are on rctech too?! LOL

I'm selling my buggy right now, but it seems that it's so unpopular that the sale doesn't flow...
 
@ cshard

Not sure what's its worth, but mine seems to be working fine, and its displaying the code "00" as i type this. I wish Zotac would release the top secret info of what the LEDs mean.
 
Also, I presume you already tried resetting the CMOS...

I've never had a board, that by holding down the power button, didn't not turn it off.

If you can, try another power supply. If that doesn't fix it, it would be a pooched board for sure.
 
Yep, reset the COMS the first thing... It's actually funny to see that the power LED on my front panel lighten up all the time yet the board is dead already, lol. What a zombie.
 
According to AMI's site -- 00 means that POST was successful and the sequence has been passed to the bootloader.

If you've got a bootblock debug tool or a hard-line flash tool handy I would try reloading the BIOS/UEFI manually, or swap out the chip for a known good one.

Or just RMA the board ;)

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!


Have you tried swapping out other core-component hardware with known-good items (PSU primarily, but also ram configurations / cpu)?
 
Hey thanks for your help Mchupo.

So now I'm really confuse. Why is my computer can boot now!!?

I didn't do anything and was basically decided that i was gonna purchase another card before going thru the long RMA process, and the computer just...uh... boot up now...!!!

The code becomes AA (or RR?) now...Should I be worried any more?

never confused like this before... don't know if I should just keep using it until it fails again or just get a new car :(
 
CShard, yes, wa a long time RCTech junkie... decided to jump back into PC's...

It works now? I highly doubt that its mechanical failure then. I would look into reloading the bios and go from there.

I am actually buying Paralysed's Zotac board once he gets it back from RMA :)
 
Woah, that's nice, should've let mine run into problems earlier so I could get an RMA and prolly sell it to you :D I'm totally not OCing now, so Z68 has become meaningless to me anyway :(
 
Hi!

I just ordered this board, but now it seems i might have made an mistake... Is it really sooo bad? I'm not planing on OCing. Just need a small low power itx board for my htpc ... Cpu will be i3 2125.

Should i just cancel the order?
 
Had it a few weeks now and there's nothing really wrong with it if you're not planning on overclocking it significantly. If you're into low power builds, this board seems to let you undervolt when the CPU is being stressed. Currently using the Dec 22 BIOS and seems fine.

I did get seemingly random failures preventing booting. Eventually tracked it down to the underplate used by my heatsink, a Thermalright AXP-140. Wouldn't be an issue with normal ATX or mini-ATX boards but with this one, a number of chips on the back of the board near the CPU are raised enough that an underplate will press directly against them. Moving the computer around would lead to mysterious post failures. But once I realized this and added washers to prevent the underplate pressing directly against the M/B chips, it's been working perfectly.
 
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Hi!
Great news ... How about features that this board offers... 2xHDMI, etc

How about fan control ... Does it work? Is it speedfan compatible yet?

Would you suggest Anything else for a small htpc build?

Thanks!
 
Couldn't get speedfan working on it, but I use my own fan controller. And with your CPU, you could probably get away with a fanless build if you put a big enough heatsink on it and have reasonable case airflow.

HDMI works, but if you're planning on using more than one monitor, make sure you turn on multimonitor in the BIOS (took me a while before I worked that out).
 
One more thing ... in my htpc case i only have one P4 4 pin ATX connector for mobo. I see that Zotac requires 8 pin. Will it work on 4 pin ?
 
Am I the only one bothered that this board lacks adjustable fan controls? Sure the option is there in bios but it does nothing... I waited for months for Zotac to fix this, but I don't think I can take it anymore....

This board is *supposed* to be for htpc builds, but what good is there to an htpc if it cannot shut up (cannot have its fan speeds controlled)...
 
for me fan control is essential. Anyway, if that gets resolved I'd be interested whether big shuriken 2 (the one with 5 heatpipes SCBSK-2000) would fit without obstructing the pcie slot
 
Hi,

I thought I had found my answer to my question further back on page 4-5, regarding issues with speedstep and this board.

I do not wish to overclock my CPU. I am running a corei7 2600k and the stock speed for this is 3.4ghz. I wish for it to be a constant 3.4ghz but cpuz shows it running at 1600mhz, which is what the minimal speed is in the bios settings. Disabling speedstep in bios doesn't do anything, it still runs at the low speed. I've tried others suggestions of power settings within the control panel, this hasn't worked either.

Lots of people have commented on how to overclock, by putting in higher multipliers and adding the extra settings for voltage, but to amend these settings you haev to have speedstep enabled.

Can someone please explain how I can have my multiplier and fsb at the constant rate? Im familiar with disabling speedstep and other settings on other intel boards, but this one is a bit of a nightmare.

I have updated the bios btw, just incase anyone needs to know.

the "minimal" settings uses a multiplier of 16, whereas i need it to be 34 (the "turbo" setting, even though its the stock setting). multiplier is around 99/100.

Many thanks

Colin
 
It will be 3.4ghz any time you use the CPU. It lowers to 1.6 when idle only what's the problem with that?
 
Does anyone have a good idea of the power draw of this motherboard (Z68ITX-B-E), including the onboard GPU? I'm wondering how much of a power supply it's going to need. I checked the manual for the board, but I couldn't find a recommended minimum power supply.
 
funklizard said:
Does anyone have a good idea of the power draw of this motherboard (Z68ITX-B-E), including the onboard GPU? I'm wondering how much of a power supply it's going to need. I checked the manual for the board, but I couldn't find a recommended minimum power supply.
Click to expand...

Well the GT 430 has a minimum recomended of 300w (it only uses 49w), which is also what the PSUcalc shows for an i7, 1 HDD and a GT 430 (275w for an i5). If you are overclocking then i'd got for a 400w.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Well the GT 430 has a minimum recomended of 300w (it only uses 49w), which is also what the PSUcalc shows for an i7, 1 HDD and a GT 430 (275w for an i5). If you are overclocking then i'd got for a 400w.
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Ouch. That's not what I wanted to hear. :(

I am looking to build a lower-power setup: something powered by a 150W supply at most; ideally 120W. I won't be overclocking. I was hoping to use this board with a 65W CPU, a mSATA SSD, and a slim ODD. But it sounds like that would be pushing things really close. It might be workable with a 35W CPU.
 
funklizard said:
Ouch. That's not what I wanted to hear. :(

I am looking to build a lower-power setup: something powered by a 150W supply at most; ideally 120W. I won't be overclocking. I was hoping to use this board with a 65W CPU, a mSATA SSD, and a slim ODD. But it sounds like that would be pushing things really close. It might be workable with a 35W CPU.
Click to expand...
Correct, you'll be cutting it way too close with a 65-watt chip. The 35 would be fine, I suspect your total consumption would be around 120 watts DC in that case.
 
fr500 said:
It will be 3.4ghz any time you use the CPU. It lowers to 1.6 when idle only what's the problem with that?
Click to expand...

I'm just used to disabling speedstep in bios and having a constant CPU speed not a fluctuating one, it's a bit shit that disabling it doesn't actually disable it - makes it pretty pointless having there in the first place? Doesn't having the multiplier changing all the time cause problems when running some apps or if you are gaming?
 
Anyone knows if that mSATA* slot can be used for something else, like a pcie 1x sound card? With the help of an extension cable, a mini-PCIe to PCI express x1 flexible riser card, something like this: http://www.adexelec.com/pemini2x1-f.jpg

*i guess it's also a mini-PCIe, since it comes by default with a network card in it, right? Pls correct me if i'm wrong.
 
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IIRC, there is a jumper (or a BIOS setting) on this board that lets you go back and forth between mSATA and mPCIe on the little slot.

I've used RAID cards and SSDs in previous zotac mitx boards (h55), so don't see what you'd have problems here.
 
Thx for the info, i hope this will remain the same with their upcoming z77 mobo.
 
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