HARDWARE

Buying Guide: For the Compact System Builder...(Part 1) - The Z77 boards, The A75 boards

3/6/2013 9:27:11 AM

Want a powerful system, but don’t have enough space for a mid-tower cabinet? With a mini-ITX board, you can have a rig which does much more than a mere HTPC. We feature 13 boards in this shoot-out using top Intel and AMD processors

In the November 2012 issue, we had tested mini-ITX boards with on-board processors and had promised to cover the non-processor sporting boards soon. This month we have covered the other end of the mini-ITX board spectrum. This segment is slowly but surely catching on, what with a lot of mother-board makers having a healthy number of mini-ITX boards without processors in their port-folio. It makes sense specially in a country like ours, where not everyone has ample space to house a mid-tower or full-tower cabinet.

The main idea behind building a mini-ITX rig is to save on space, but at the same time get a powerful PC. Also with processors these days coming with a lower TDP than their predecessors around three years back, it makes for a power efficient system. With mini-ITX boards sporting a Z77 chipset, it is not hard to make a decently powerful PC if you use the right components. For the purists who already have a power hungry high-end rig, but want more than a basic HTPC to complement their flat-screen TV, the mini-ITX boards with chipsets such as A75, H77 & H61 come to the rescue. Although in our test, we have used a 620W power supply, you do not really need a PSU rated that high if you are looking at a mainstream system build.

The Z77 boards

We got three Z77 boards, namely ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe, ASRock Z77E-ITX and ZOTAC Z77-ITX. All three boards look quite different from each other thanks to different color themes and board layouts.

The ASUS board layout is markedly different from the ASRock and ZOTAC boards. While on the former you have the chipset located between the PCIe x16 slot and the CPU socket, on the latter boards it is the CPU socket which lies between the chipset and the PCIe x16 slot. This is thanks to the extra PCB – the daughterboard which houses the Digi+ VRM (voltage regulator module) circuitry. The idea to add in another PCB on top of the ITX board was to get rid of the space-constraints of the mini-ITX form factor, and at the same time give the user a power-packed board. The daughterboard is 4.2 cm in height, rising at a right angle to the P8Z77-I board. Not only does it house the solid state capacitors but also a passive heat-sink. It is an intelligent layout as by taking the VRM circuitry on the daughter-board, there is enough space around the CPU socket for adding in a fan. On the lower side of the boards, things are pretty dense, with a PCIe 3.0 slot running at x16 speeds, packed very close to the chipset which has four SATA ports (2xSATA 2 and 2xSATA 3) on the right and the Wi-Fi and bluetooth card on the left-hand side.

Gigabyte H77N-WIFI

Gigabyte H77N-WIFI

When it comes to heat-sinks, all the three Z77 boards are impressive. The heat-sink on the ZOTAC board is quite good, with the VRM heat-sink connected to the chipset heat-sink via a heat-pipe helping in quicker heat dissipation. The ASRock heat-sink is not as elaborate as the ones seen on ZOTAC & ASUS but is decent enough. All the three boards have the SATA ports pointing upwards, with a 2x2 arrangement on ZOTAC and ASRock boards and a 1x4 arrangement on the ASUS board. There are two USB 2.0 headers and a USB 3.0 header on all boards. All the boards come with on-board Wi-Fi card which fits in the mini PCIe slot. Out of the box, the wire management of the WiFi card was the best on ASUS and ASRock boards where it was nicely maneuvered through the components on the board. The ZOTAC board’s wire was found to be dangling. These are little things, but it shows the attention to detail by the board makers.

The ZOTAC board was the only one which had dedicated power and reset buttons on board along with a POST error-code readout LED. These are desirable features in a board. The ASUS P8Z77-I offers the MemOK button which helps to check on faulty memory modules, and on the back I/O panel it features the clear CMOS and BIOS flash but-tons. The region around the CPU was the best in the ASUS board followed by ASRock and ZOTAC boards. The 8-pin CPU power connector found on all three boards is placed most strategically on the ASUS board. The back I/O panels on all the boards are quite well represented. Both ASUS and ASRock offer four USB 3.0 ports and sport a DVI, HDMI and a DisplayPort each whereas the ZOTAC board sports two HDMI ports along with one mini-DisplayPort. It has two LAN ports as opposed to one each on the ASUS and ASRock boards.

The UEFI BIOS is present on all the boards, but ASUS’s implementation is really good. It also offers shortcuts within the BIOS to quickly navigate to the option you want to tweak. The number of over-clocking options offered by the ASUS board was more than ASRock or ZOTAC. We were able to overclock the Intel Core i7-3770K on the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe to 4.4 GHz whereas the other two boards could only manage 4.1 GHz on the stock cooler. This is courtesy the daughterboard which gives the ASUS board enough headroom to over-clock. Ease of overclocking was decent on all the boards in this segment. When it came to utilities, again the ASUS offerings were way better than the other two.

ASUS P8Z77

ASUS P8Z77

The A75 boards

AMD processors have been quite impressive when it comes to their on-board gaming performance, but it seems that mother board makers aren’t very enthusiastic about expanding that portfolio. We were expecting some FM2 socket based AMD boards so that we could try out the latest AMD A10-5800K APU which gives a brilliant gaming performance along with mid-range CPU performance. We got only two boards with the AMD A75 chipset, namely ZOTAC A75-ITX and ASRock A75M-ITX, both sporting the older FM1 socket for which we used an AMD A8-3850 APU. The layout on both the boards is quite different with the ZOTAC board appearing rather cramped as compared to the ASRock board. The placement of the 4-pin power module on the ZOTAC board is quite strange, lodged as it is between the Wi-Fi antenna out and the USB 3.0 ports on the back panel IO as compared to the more mainstream placement of the power port on the ASRock A75M-ITX. The heat-sinks on the ZOTAC boards are quite better than the one on ASRock. Thanks to the A75 chipset, all the four SATA ports are SATA 6 Gbps. One striking ommision from the ASRock A75M-ITX is a USB 3.0 header, whereas the ZOTAC board has one despite having six USB 3.0 ports (as opposed to four on ASRock A75M-ITX) on the back panel IO. Another advantage that the ZOTAC board has over-boards so that we could try out the latest AMD A10-5800K APU which gives a brilliant gaming performance along with mid-range CPU performance. We got only two boards with the AMD A75 chipset, namely ZOTAC A75-ITX and ASRock A75M-ITX, both sporting the older FM1 socket for which we used an AMD A8-3850 APU. The layout on both the boards is quite different with the ZOTAC board appearing rather cramped as compared to the ASRock board. The placement of the 4-pin power module on the ZOTAC board is quite strange, lodged as it is between the Wi-Fi antenna out and the USB 3.0 ports on the back panel IO as compared to the more mainstream placement of the power port on the ASRock A75M-ITX. The heatsinks on the ZOTAC boards are quite better than the one on ASRock. Thanks to the A75 chipset, all the four SATA ports are SATA 6 Gbps. One striking ommision from the ASRock A75M-ITX is a USB 3.0 header, whereas the ZOTAC board has one despite having six USB 3.0 ports (as opposed to four on ASRock A75M-ITX) on the back panel IO. Another advantage that the ZOTAC board has over the ASRock board is the presence of a dedicated Wi-Fi card in the mini PCIe slot. But as was seen on the Z77-ITX board, the wire coming out of the Wi-Fi card is just dangling and not managed well along the components. Due to the absence of a heatsink around the VRM, the A75M-ITX board has more space around the CPU socket than the ZOTAC board which has taller heatsinks on both the VRM as well as the chipset. Back panel I/O ports on the ZOTAC board are quite varied thanks to the presence of on-board Wi-Fi and an extra LAN port. The ASRock board lacks a dedicated DVI port, which may be attributed to its layout which allots a significant portion along the back panel I/O to accommodate the edge of the DIMM slots, two capacitors and the fan connectors. As expected, there are no on-board dedicated power/reset or other buttons. Only the Z75-ITX A-E has a clear CMOS button on the back I/O panel, just under the two Wi-Fi antenna outs. The BIOS on the ZOTAC board is quite boring so to speak, offering mouse functionality whereas the one on ASRock board is quite good looking thanks to the graphical UEFI BIOS. Overclocking isn’t really the strong point of these boards though.

Foxconn H61S

Foxconn H61S

Other  
 
Top 10
Review : Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
Review : Canon EF11-24mm f/4L USM
Review : Creative Sound Blaster Roar 2
Review : Philips Fidelio M2L
Review : Alienware 17 - Dell's Alienware laptops
Review Smartwatch : Wellograph
Review : Xiaomi Redmi 2
Extending LINQ to Objects : Writing a Single Element Operator (part 2) - Building the RandomElement Operator
Extending LINQ to Objects : Writing a Single Element Operator (part 1) - Building Our Own Last Operator
3 Tips for Maintaining Your Cell Phone Battery (part 2) - Discharge Smart, Use Smart
REVIEW
- First look: Apple Watch

- 3 Tips for Maintaining Your Cell Phone Battery (part 1)

- 3 Tips for Maintaining Your Cell Phone Battery (part 2)
VIDEO TUTORIAL
- How to create your first Swimlane Diagram or Cross-Functional Flowchart Diagram by using Microsoft Visio 2010 (Part 1)

- How to create your first Swimlane Diagram or Cross-Functional Flowchart Diagram by using Microsoft Visio 2010 (Part 2)

- How to create your first Swimlane Diagram or Cross-Functional Flowchart Diagram by using Microsoft Visio 2010 (Part 3)
Popular Tags
Microsoft Access Microsoft Excel Microsoft OneNote Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Project Microsoft Visio Microsoft Word Active Directory Biztalk Exchange Server Microsoft LynC Server Microsoft Dynamic Sharepoint Sql Server Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2012 Windows 7 Windows 8 Adobe Indesign Adobe Flash Professional Dreamweaver Adobe Illustrator Adobe After Effects Adobe Photoshop Adobe Fireworks Adobe Flash Catalyst Corel Painter X CorelDRAW X5 CorelDraw 10 QuarkXPress 8 windows Phone 7 windows Phone 8