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ZOTAC GF9300-A-E Intel Motherboards
Customer Reviews for ZOTAC GF9300-A-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9300 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Newegg.com's Product Ratings and Reviews feature enables Newegg.com customers to help each other make informed buying decisions. Learn More

Price: $99.99
Sale Price: $94.99
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Review Summary (45 Reviews): Rating + 4
OverallLast 2 WeeksLast 6 Months
Excellent Rating + 5 21ReviewsExcellent
newegg
47%
Good Rating + 4 9ReviewsGood
newegg
20%
Average Rating + 3 6ReviewsAverage
newegg
13%
Poor Rating + 2 1ReviewsPoor
newegg
2%
Very Poor Rating + 1 8ReviewsVery Poor
newegg
18%
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Reviewer Product Review
Sparky
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/28/2010 5:43:41 PM

Rating + 4 Cautiously Optimistic


Pros: Inexpensive; relatively easy installation

Cons: None...yet.

Other Thoughts: Had to buy this board to replace DOA ASUS MOBO. Worried given some of the reviews, but seems ok...for now. Will udpate

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Jon
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/22/2010 8:44:53 AM

Rating + 1 Stay away!


Pros: It looks like an awesome MB on paper

Cons: This is an update to my DOA review. Against my better judgment, I RMA'd the MB for a replacement. The replacement arrived with the exact same error code as the first one (A0). There is no documentation about what this error code means, but Zotac said to return it. I will be asking NewEgg for a refund this time, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to pay shipping charges every time.

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Jon
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/13/2010 10:08:35 AM

Rating + 1 DOA


Pros: The last of the GeForce 9 MBs

Cons: Like other reviewers before me, mine was DOA with a useless, undocumented error code. Zotac's web site is a PITA and response time from product support was extremely slow - so slow, in fact, that I had already RMA'd the MB back to NewEgg before i received a reply from Zotac. Will post an update when the replacement arrives. If #2 is DOA, I'm asking for a refund.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/9/2010 7:42:51 PM

Rating + 1 Useless as a dead dog!


Pros: Looks pretty; good specs (on paper).

Cons: DOA

Other Thoughts: This was my first (and probably my last) experience with Zotac. Perhaps Zotac's Mini-ITX products are of better quality, but I doubt it.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Mark from Boston
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/8/2010 5:43:51 PM

Rating + 1 The WORST product I've ever owned


Pros: None. Zero. Zilch.

This product is total and complete garbage.

The company and website are just as bad.

Cons: Does POST. There's a two-digit LED on the motherboard which is nice but nowhere on the website or the manual does it tell you what error code C1 is.

The website is completely brain dead. In order to access anything or download you first need to register. So I register using my throw-away Gmail account. I then 'activate' using the email they sent me and I still can't login. It keeps telling me that this isn't a valid account.

Hello???? I just freakin registered a couple of minutes ago. I click the 'lost my password' link and it tells me there's no such account.

I go back to my email and click the 'activation link' they sent me. Now it fails telling me the link is no longer valid.

So I go and register again. Fill out the form, click 'Submit' and it fails. It tells me an account with this email address already exists.

So I go back to the login page and tell it to send me my password and now it tells me there's no such password in their system.

Other Thoughts: My NewEgg purchases show how much computer equipment I buy each year. And it's a LOT. I have never been so disappointed by a product and company as I have with this one.

I've built at least 8-10 computers over the years and NEVER had a problem. This motherboard looks nice and I really wanted to use it.

Unfortunately it is COMPLETE GARBAGE that won't post, won't boot and while the LED display on the mobo is great idea... it is *completely stupid* not to have a table of what the various error codes actually are.

If they can't figure out something as simple as listing the error codes then I have no faith in this company. This was my first Zotac product and it will definitely be my last.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Rusty
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/29/2009 10:03:24 PM

Rating + 5 Good board, great price


Pros: Great board with easy to use items. I loaded it up with an E8400 and can use the onboard nVidia 9300 to do 1080p, and blue ray HD just fine.
I have it running under Win 7 home prof, and Fedora Core 12

Cons: A little hard to mix standard IDE drives with the new SATA drives. Win 7 won't recognize any of the old IDE drives on the IDe controller, but that OK, Linux will.

Other Thoughts: I like the Micro-ATX format - leaves plenty of room for easy cabling, as long as you don't have too many PCI_E boards to install.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/14/2009 1:57:54 PM

Rating + 2


Pros: The motherboard had more features than I needed and when I got one that worked it did everything I wanted. It is a very good board and is easy to setup and configure.

Cons: The first board I received had a number of pins on the CPU socket bent and twisted. I RAMed it and the second board was ok. The shipping for the new board was slow, not the nusual 3 days.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

BaldBoy67
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/13/2009 8:20:29 AM

Rating + 4 Good quality board for MythTV


Pros: Built in Nvidia 9300 graphics, with HDMI, DVI and VGA. Low overall cost for this type of board (especially with recent rebate). Perfect fit for revamping my 4 year old MythTV system. I have it up and running with MythBuntu for a week using HDMI for video and audio without any major issues.

Cons: No display port has been talked about, but for my application, HDMI, DVI and VGA are more than adequate. Also, I did run into the issue that others had talked about regarding the strange issues detecting boot devices.

Mine would not see the primary PATA harddrive, but it would it see my SATA drive that I had intended to use as storage only. I reset the plan and just used the SATA as I did not have time to figure out this issue.

I also see a strange horizontal waviness in top 1/3 of the display when playing back with VDPAU. It only happens with motion in the frame and is only slightly annoying. I am hoping this is only a drive issue that will rectify itself. The board is more than adequate to playback without VDPAU with a E5200 and 2GB of RAM, but VDPAU is nice to offload to allow processor to do commercial marking and transcoding.

Other Thoughts: Again, an overall great system for a combined MythTV backend and front end. Newegg is still the best overall place to get hardware from. Keep up the good work.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

amcdaniel86
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/12/2009 6:32:00 PM

Rating + 5 Great NAS/HTPC


Pros: I needed Raid5 capability for 3-5 years planned storage and thewith auto-rebuild and good Windows status via the nVidia control panel just tops it off. If you have a newer HDTV, it has HDMI Video/Audio out (my tv doesn't push HDMI audio to my receiver) that works great and can resize the video to the true pixel size of a 1080p tv (about 1880x1040 pixels). This works perfectly for a combination HTPC and NAS for my workhorse server and laptop.

Cons: You need other components to make it work (cpu, ram, etc). I had to disconnect my RAID 5 array to allow all of Windows 7 (has a stupid 100MB OS partition) to install on my separate Seagate drive - When I reconnected the drives to the same ports there was no problem or degradation though.

Software RAID relies on the CPU. If something happens to the motherboard I need another Zotac GF9300-a-e (read other thoughts for my solution to this).

The GELID Solutions Slim Silence 775 CPU cooler cut my finger when I touched a fan blade by accident while it was on.

Other Thoughts: I have a 1 Gigabit backbone in my house and a switch to handle it - while transferring over 800 GigaBYTES of data to the unit I averaged 38% of that (real world speed is 1/8th that due to bit to byte conversion). Within Windows, min was 20% for smaller files while max hit over 60% while reading from a either single SATA and ESATA drive on my other server. At that speed there isn't a difference between internal and attached storage. Much better than most single purpose NAS drives.

Bought this when the Intel SS4200 NAS decided it was sold out after I paid for it. No regrets, I'm already thankful since I had to swap 2 SATA cables around on my RAID5 array (due to cable stretching). The array went into degraded status for one of the drives, removed the drive and added it back in to let it auto rebuild. With the Intel unit I wouldn't have had that option.

This is in an nMedia htpc 400ba with an Intel E6300 (Conroe C2D) and OCZ 2x2GB, Seagate 160GB, 3 x Samsung 1TB drives in RAID5

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

dugn
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/8/2009 10:35:01 AM

Rating + 3 Hold Your Breath and Hope


Pros: It works out of the box. It's a great form-factor for small builds. Good assortment of connectors, options and features for this price-point. Ran Windows 7 nicely straight out of the box.

Cons: Unable to wake from USB (Zotac only put this in their more expensive GF9300-G-E). Difficult to find BIOS version (need a utility from the Zotac site).

Other Thoughts: 40mm fan was not loud (as another reviewer complained). If you can live without wake-from-USB, then this is a great HTPC or small-form factor motherboard. Scored this down to 2 eggs from 4 due to the inability to register boad for promised lifetime warranty, hit-and-miss availability of drivers (drivers section of site is often down), poor/lackluster support, failure to obtain rebate. Emails for support and/or registration went 1+ weeks before being answered if ever. As long as this machine does what you need, never need drivers, support, your rebate or to regsiter your product for their lifetime support, this board will do you fine. Good board. Bad company, rebate, driver and BOIS support.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

cg006
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/27/2009 10:21:27 PM

Rating + 5 awesome board!!!!


Pros: Have had this board for over a week. paired it with a was bumed out the gigabyte 9400 board was discontinued and had waitwd for a replacement which was never released so ijumped on this one

used a core2duo@2.8 ghz(not oced) and 2gb of ram
this board is working awesome. have it in my htpc. works awesome supports 5.1 and 7.1 dolby digital and dts . has native hdmi support. i plugged this machine to my receiver via hdmi before i loaded win7 and i was able to view my bios off the bat on my projector. i highly recommend it. so far everythimg is good. i can stream my 1080p stuff flawlessly

Cons: wished it had the 9400 gphx

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Schwartz
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/25/2009 10:58:07 AM

Rating + 5 Still going strong


Pros: 10 months later and still going strong. Runs windows 7 without a problem.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: WILL RUN A X3220 Xeon Quad Core, and I love it.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Cerberus
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
11/8/2009 9:15:52 AM

Rating + 5 Great HTPC Motherboard


Pros: Flawless 1080p playback with onboard video chipset. HDMI/DVI/VGA outputs will let you hook it up to just about any new TV. LGA 775 socket lets you put some in horse power in there with it. Runs XBMC on Ubuntu like a dream on my 42" LCD TV.

Cons: GPU idles at about 80C, however it never seems to go above 88C so just be sure you have good air flow in your case and it shouldn't be a problem.

Other Thoughts: Depending on what case you get be aware that the CPU's heat sink will come very close any rear mounted PSUs so consider getting an aftermarket that has a low profile. Also note this board only has 2 SATA ports (one for your optical drive, one for your hdd) so its best to stream any content you may have over the network or from a large external drive (I went with a "drobo" external drive and it works great!).

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Flowertown, SC
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/5/2009 8:09:48 AM

Rating + 5 A Tight Fit for a Tight System


Pros: Small. Filled with what you need including wireless. Bios with options for tuning.

Cons: I needed a magnifying glass to see what my needle noose pliers were doing (forget using your hand).

Other Thoughts: Running: Windows 7 HP, 4GB 6400 DDR2 with E6300 in a Rosewill RC-C1X-01 with DVD and 1TB SATA. Slightly disappointed with a Microsoft score of 4.7. Graphics was the limiting score. The rest were in the high 5's. I just used the drivers that came automatically from Windows update. Also the memory I installed was not 1066.

Temps: CPU 42C (Intel, retail cooler).

Noise: a hum (it is much quietier than my other ITX and my larger machines).

The case made working with the board more difficult than I suspect other cases would be. I was able to install the antenna on the unused top audio hole on the back plate. However, I had to turn it upside down to get it to fit (I don't think the radio waves minded).

Price: < $540 including OS

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btidey
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/26/2009 11:14:59 AM

Rating + 5


Pros: Easy to put together and very good feature set for the price, particularly the video output connectivity, the support for 6 SATA, the large number of USBs and the Firewire. Well laid out internal connectors offering easy expansion. I'm using with Q9550 and 8GB. I like the fan cooling on the 9300 chipset as this has a reputation for running hot with passive cooling and the fan on mine is very quiet.

Cons: Only 4 of the USBs brought out on backplate. I have put a 4 port expansion plate to pick up on motherboard headers. So now have 8 at the back, 2 at the front spare.

Other Thoughts: Supplied CD drivers were not Windows 7 64bit compliant but not really an issue as it always best to check on manufacturer's site for latest anyway and they were available there.

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AJ
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/25/2009 7:17:56 AM

Rating + 5 HTPC Build


Pros: Worked out of box No problems installing os - tried XP Pro and Win 7
HDMI/dvi/db15 outputs
HD audio - 7.1/5.1
VERY QUIET! Using Q8400 intel cpu with stock cooling - no noise!

Cons: Manual could be better written.

Other Thoughts: Looking forward to gaming on my 61" Samsung.......

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/12/2009 11:57:50 AM

Rating + 4 Runs my Media Center


Pros: 1. Onboard HDMI and blu-ray decoding and HDMI audio
2. Good price for the features
3. Worked out of for the box with Windows 7
4. Good for XBMC

Cons: Odd choice to only offer a coaxial digital audio output and no optical.

Other Thoughts: I was concerned about some of the wake-on-usb issues reported by other review, but I perform a full power on/off via the remote that came with my Moneual MonCaso 312B case, so I'm fine with that.

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AntiFan
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/16/2009 8:03:26 AM

Rating + 3 First Impressions


Pros: Excellent assortment of connections. Bought this to replace a motherboard I gave to a client in an emergency.

Cons: HDMI audio is scratchy/distorted. I currently have an antec 500W power supply, 1 sata hard drive, 1 sata dvd burner, two sticks of micron memory and a quad core cpu installed. HDMI out is connected to a Magnavox TV HDMI port (26" LCD) and the audio is scratchy/poor sounding. The video is ok, actually seemed to look better coming out of the DVI port. The only reason I bought this board was for the HDMI out and the generous assortment of connections. I had no problems with audio before this on any of my equipment.

Other Thoughts: I'll try a better shielded hdmi cable next and a different TV. I've already tried numerous bios settings to see if it would affect the audio quality. I tried tweaking Windows XP settings and disabling the realtek audio (hdmi is coming from an nvidia chip). Nothing worked.

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
9/11/2009 9:41:11 AM

Rating + 1 Unbelievable


Pros: Works right out of the box. Geforce 9300, HDMI, 6x sata/raid, Fan on NB,

Cons: Won't Hold CMOS settings over night.
No CPU Voltage control!
No CPU Voltage control!
No CPU Voltage control!
No CPU Voltage control!
Makes this board an impossible overclocker. I was at 3.2ghz stable on an e2160 on my gigabyte board, I'm at 2.6ghz now (enduring random reboots and bsods)

Other Thoughts: Wish I would've bought it from newegg, so I could return it for a different brand. :(

2 out of 9 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

BlondieTech
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/27/2009 5:50:01 PM

Rating + 5 Not Bad at all.


Pros: Very easy to install no major hurdles. Great board for the price.

Cons: None yet

Other Thoughts: My driver CD from Zotac was bent... I'm still trying to figure that one out. Luckily their website had all the drivers that Vista couldn't find.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

CaGator
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/18/2009 9:36:37 AM

Rating + 4 Good Price for Solid Board


Pros: Board works out of box without BIOS updates
PS/2 Port Support (compared to Intel)
Price
WinXP can install without SATA Drivers
Win7 works with no issues
GeForce 9300 Support.

Cons: FAN on NB chip is louder than CPU fan.
No Monitoring software for board (zotac or third party)
Limited ability to overclock of underclock

Other Thoughts: I was looking for a good board for a bed home theatre PC with a Lian LI-PC-C37 case and I am very happy with this board after the following modifications.

Replaced the NB fan (rated at 26db) with a Scythe 40MM (rated at 19.56 db) and used the Win7 drivers instead of Zotacs and I have a nice quiet machine that looks great.

Now I haven't found any software that can monitor this board temperatures accurately, so if you are into overclocking or want to monitor the system closely, you will need to look elsewhere.

But if you are looking for a board with PS/2 ports and GeForce 9300 HDMI support, this board is available at a great price.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/30/2009 11:56:35 AM

Rating + 1 DOA


Pros: None.

Cons: DOA.

Other Thoughts: Grrrr....

1 out of 9 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

geoff29
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/25/2009 2:38:38 PM

Rating + 5 works great for me.


Pros: This board set right up with no problems whatsoever. It is very quiet, I have to put my ear close to it to hear it. It seems to be much better quality than the Gigabyte board I purchased 5 years ago which was top of the line at the time, and it is a quarter the size. Plus it is a little quicker with the core duo that I purchased for it than the Gigabyte is, so I guess you only get a couple years out of computer equipment before obsolesence so you may as well not spend a fortune for one that works well.

Cons: There's something funky with the usb connections. I use xp and it doesn't seem to handle having the plugs removed and plugged into other ports and this is following proper drive xp drive removal procedures. Also, the front sound speaker only works through one speaker at a time. Now I never use the front speaker jack, so I don't really mind, and it may be the fault of the case header and not the mobo.

Other Thoughts: I have never assembled a computer before so I'm not really clear why there are experts who assembled this board and had it blow up on them or spew smoke, because for me it was not brain surgery.

If you want a small board this is worth your consideration.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Notsniw
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/16/2009 10:15:00 AM

Rating + 5


Pros: This board is worth every penny I installed it almost 5 months ago and never had any issues with it

specs Core 2 Quad 9650 Gforce 9800 GT 8gb DDR2 800 OCZ Performance 2 1.5TB seagate LG blu ray burner zalman Reserator XT SL to keep it cool

Cons: none

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
6/5/2009 11:36:16 PM

Rating + 4 Very descent


Pros: I have had this board for about seven months. It runs very well. The onboard video can support two displays w/1080P resolutions easily on each display. I have a 21.5" LCD Monitor & a 1080P LCD HDTV. I don't game on my PC, but it's great for watching blue-ray movies on. My first m-board did have video driver issues w/Vista but the board was quickly replaced w/a good one by Newegg. I must also say that the Zotac customer support is very responsive (quick). My PC specs are: Intel Core 2 Q9300, 4GB RAM, 500GB Seagate Hardrive, & LG Blue-Ray drive.

Cons: The VGA port is not firmly supported by the bracket on motherboard. Try to get an I/O shield that reinforces the VGA port if you can. While I have plugged & unplugged my monitor many times, frequents connects/dis-connects on this port are not recommended. The DVI port is located below the VGA port & is better supported. I currently use the HDMI port for my monitor w/o any issues.

I have had a few start-up issues w/the board, but this may be attributed to Vista. I have had to reset the CMOS to resolve this issue a few times.

Other Thoughts: Overall a worthy buy. I would have no hesitation purchasing a Zotac board in the future IF the price undercuts the next competitors m-board (w/similar specs).

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

DragonLight
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
5/24/2009 10:38:52 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Bought this board for a small computer I was putting together for a relative for Xmas 08. It's been a great board since with no issues. It's just used for normal web browsing and videos though. Onboard graphics aren't halfbad. If your a gamer though you'll need a true GPU to go with it.

Cons: None that I can think of.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Mike
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
5/7/2009 9:10:38 AM

Rating + 5 So Far So good


Pros: I've had this Mother board for just over a week. Been running none stop with no problems. Components seemed to be high quality with no issues. Installation was simple. Plus I've successfully configured a dual boot system with Windows XP and OpenSuse 11.1 running the latest kernel and Nvidia graphics drivers. Just follow the linux tips for manually installing the driver and don't bother with the Yast install or One click install.

Cons: Not a fault of the Motherboard, but depending on your case, you'll need to be careful on RAM choices. In my HEC 7KJ9 case, the CD rom is right above the RAM. You might not be able to use those high performance RAM chips with the tall heat sinks. Also the the Power supply cables with this combo are a tight fit as the PS cables aren't quite long enough to reach the MB header

As for Zotac customer support, I had no luck going though the phone support, but did have luck with the online support chat. Seemed my drivers CDRom disk was bad, and the main Zotac.com site was down when I needed to download drivers. Customer support was able to get me alternative links

Other Thoughts: For the price you can't beat this motherboard with all the features it does offer. Makes one heck of a nice system for less then $400

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

nebadon
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
3/22/2009 8:37:24 AM

Rating + 5 Fantastic Motherboard


Pros: This motherboard is really great for the money, the onboard 9300 is not the most highest performing card out there, with Windows 7 64, 8gb RAM and the onboard 9300 using 512mb ram i was able to get a score of 1850 points on 3Dmark06 clearly out performing my old AGP machine. You really can not go wrong with this purchase, all the parts included are of the highest quality, CPU installation is a snap, and performance is well above average. I would have no problem purchasing Zotac again, infact im waiting on the Zotac 9800 GT from UPS any day.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: DO IT!

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N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
3/21/2009 2:09:40 PM

Rating + 1 DOA


Pros: The placement of the SATA ports fit my case quite nicely. Also the included parts were very well made.

Cons: The board wouldn't post. There is a readout for the error codes but the manual doesn't include a guide for these codes. The backplate is very cheap and flimsy. I'm actually surprised that I didn't cut myself on it.

Other Thoughts: I'm certain this board would be fine if I didn't have the bad luck of getting a lemon. I RMA'd it and went with an Intel board.

1 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Jacques Clouseau
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
3/20/2009 7:29:20 AM

Rating + 3 Finally...


Pros: Works great once I got a functional one and found the drivers.

Cons: First one was DOA and sent back for RMA - second one was delivered to neighbors garage. Finally tracked it down, built the system and was ready to load the drivers but the Zotac CD included in the box was so warped it wouldn't read. Went to the Zotac web site to download the files and the links were are all broken. Finally found the needed drivers at the nVidia and Realtek websites.

Other Thoughts: Geez - this build was jinx'd. In the end, all is well...

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Got Options ?
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
3/9/2009 2:58:18 PM

Rating + 3 Zotac GF9300 Update from last post


Pros: The board worked for almost one month and was good for games, color and clarity added to Halo 1 for example, Running Vista fine and much faster than pentium class laptop.

Cons: Error with board past New Eggs one month warranty. Shuts down almost immediately. Had to submit for RMA to the MFG. Perhaps the New Egg recommended Gigabyte board that is high rated a better choice stability wise despite having to buy a separate video card ? So far 2 weeks wait with the MFG and this system has been down or spotty since Jan 1 so the delays are not fun. Glad that Zotac MFG supplies support though.

Other Thoughts: New Egg should consider a system build section of their website for folks who have built entire systems and have had them up and running for one year reliably or more. ( even 6 months ). Takes the mystery out of whether your system that you are excited to use will let you down or not. When it does it becomes hard to give it 5 eggs thats for sure. We like flexibility in purchassing but also have no idea about stability when we purchasse so info on that will help.

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jpatadia
Tech Level: high
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
3/5/2009 11:31:22 PM

Rating + 1 Useless Piece of Junk


Pros: Cheapest 9300 MB out there...

Cons: A dead on arrival Motherboard is usually better than how this MB behaves. At least you don't spend hours trying to figure out what's wrong.

1st Problem - Dead IDE port, so I needed to get a SATA CD rom drive. After that, found out that out of the six SATA ports, only three work - rest simply do not recognize my drives. Even the three that do work, they randomly loose my drive connection.

Other Thoughts: This thing has been a nightmare. I'm planning to return it to newegg and get a name brand version instead. Save yourself grief and buy a better brand.

3 out of 5 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
2/6/2009 9:52:30 AM

Rating + 4


Pros: Board runs fine after I finally got Windows XP installed. Decode was <10% for h.264 content recorded on a Hauppauge HDPVR and <20% for MPEG2 OTA recordings using an E5200.

Cons: The BIOS ignores the boot order you set in the BIOS. I tried every combination. I even set ALL THREE boot devices to the CD-ROM and it would go directly to the HD instead. It took a couple of days to realize that pressing ESC during post would bring up the actual boot menu. I could not boot from the DVD drive AT ALL until I figured this one out. You can see the message if you disable all the splash screens and enable the long system check. That way, it stays on the post screen long enough to see the prompt to press ESC. Scroll down and select the CD-ROM. I read that this same menu comes up with F12 on the Gigabyte board.

Other Thoughts: None

7 out of 7 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

redstone
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
2/2/2009 7:19:55 AM

Rating + 4 Everything works.


Pros: Lots of features for small mb. Fits in slim micro-ATX case. Can run server software (RHEL 5.2). Run Yorkdale 5500 cpu. Also can run 128GB SSD sate (super talent) - on a 250 watt PS.

Cons: Poor support for Linux.

Other Thoughts: To other reviewer- you can get RHEL 5 to work. I can not get multicores to show up in RHEL 5.2 however - not sure if it is a bios setting or what.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Schwartz
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/27/2009 7:09:17 AM

Rating + 5 Great


Pros: Works great, Hybrid SLI, Got Everything Going with no quirks. I got the right I\O Shield.

Cons: NONE

Other Thoughts: E8400 3.0Ghz, 4x2GB DRR2 Patriot RAM, 2x400GB HDD, This Board, TV Tuner, Dual SATA DVDRW

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

SpartnJohn113
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/26/2009 1:49:04 PM

Rating + 5 Great Board for the price


Pros: Easy setup, booted right up, great on board gpu, reads every thing perfectly, works great with my parts

Cons: just a wrong rear cut out but that isn't enough to make a 4 egg

Other Thoughts: the wrong rear cut out seems to be a pretty common problem,

the labels on the motherboard for pins for power switch was really nice

the gpu is decent for gaming but can only give a good performance when I play elder scrolls 4 on medium graphics quality

nice on board sound card

works great with 2x1 gig patriot ddr2 800 mhz, segate barracuda 3g sata, Q6600 2.4 ghz quad core intel cpu

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mlp
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/19/2009 6:55:59 PM

Rating + 4 good mobo with some quirks


Pros: Has a currently somewhat rare combination of integrated NVIDIA 9300 graphics, integrated firewire, the 775 socket, and x16 PCI-Express slot. The board runs my DVR (mythtv) and drives my bigscreen TV in 1080p. Runs linux nicely.

Cons: The box shipped with the wrong rear cutout for the case. The board has the VGA on top of the DVI connector, but the cutout had holes for the opposite arrangement. Zotac's customer service knew about this and a call was enough to get the right cutout shipped, but I still needed to take the PC apart once more.
There is a quirk with the boot setup. No matter what the BIOS has as boot order, the board will NOT boot from a CD as long as there is one disk with a valid MBR connected to the boot-capable Sata 1...4. The only way to get a CD booted (and still be able to access a disk) was to move the disk to Sata connector 5 or 6.
The manual is not very helpful (example from the "CPU features" section in th BIOS: "Limit CPUID MaxVal" -- "Use this option to enable or disable the function of Limiting CPUID MaxVal). Then again, except for some mystery settings, the BIOS is pretty straightforward, and serious overclockers will most likely stay clear of this board anyway.

Other Thoughts: The board comes with a bracket for the IEC11394/firewire, but that has only one connector. The board has 2 firewire headers. I would have liked to have a bracket with 2 connectors, one 6-pin and one 4-pin.

I picked the board for the combination of on-board peripherals and graphics that I mentioned above. I added a low-power E2200 CPU and it runs very quiet. Good board for an entertainment PC.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

falcor
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/17/2009 9:34:38 PM

Rating + 4 Good MOBO with some caveats


Pros: Solid construction and layout. Potential memory expansion to 16GB. Very nice on-board video chip. Performance tests are outstanding.

Cons: Manual is sketchy. If you use IDE mode for hard drives, only 4 SATA ports are enabled. You have to configure RAID in order to activate SATA ports 5 and 6. I found this only after the fact. Also an attempt to install Linux (RHEL 4) failed -- seems like there are no drivers that support this board. I had to use the workaround via VMWare VMs.

Other Thoughts: Built also included: Sigma Shark 585 W Power Supply, Intel Kentsfield Q6600, OCZ 8GB PC 6400, 1 Hitachi TB SATA+1 Azus DVD-ROM.

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Raye
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/5/2009 5:04:46 PM

Rating + 3 No USB power/wake up option


Pros: Still working great but...

Cons: Manual shows it can wake from USB device but bios does not support. So if people want to use USB based RF devices to wake up the system, this is not the board.
Also it cannot power USB devices (not even one port) in S3 mode or hiebernate mode.

Other Thoughts: I cannot edit or update my previous post, hence writing a new one. I still keep my old rating though.
Zotac support confirms that it is mistake in manual and mobo doesn't support this option. Pretty useless for me.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Got Options ?
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
1/2/2009 5:29:56 PM

Rating + 5 Zotacs Running Smooth


Pros: Everything logically placed on the boards real estate, all the features I need. plenty of room for add ons. Vista Experience checks out nice up to 5.9. Pegless processor socket allows for smooth and easy placement. Corsair 8 Gig went in smoooth. Sata Slots easy, Mobo bias was easy to load and understand, Vista read everything fine, first load. ( nothing legacy ).

Cons: Beware of Case standoffs, you need nylon spacers or plastic standoffs or else the Mobo will short. No other so far.

Other Thoughts: Everythings running quiet, Vista Load was flawless, Included drivers easy to access from CD. Control Panel Device Drivers very logical and easy to follow. VERY NICE !!!

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ESP
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/30/2008 1:05:53 PM

Rating + 5 Good motherboard for the price


Pros: Installation and setup of the board in my new system were completed with only one minor problem (wrong I/O panel). Haven't stressed it too much yet, but so far the performance has been great considering the price -- especially of the onboard video.

Cons: It looks like there are a batch of boards that were packaged with the wrong I/O panel. Just write a message to Zotac support and they will send you a new one. I have already received it.

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raye
Tech Level: high
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/19/2008 10:26:35 AM

Rating + 3 Missing parts and incorrect parts


Pros: Good board and loading vista 32bit is smooth. Need to change the bios setting to boot from blu-ray drive. Over-all performance is also pretty good. 1080/24P works fine for BD & HD titles. Some options in bios for over-clocking.

Cons: Connector plate for chassis is wrong one. I had to cut the plate and remove DVI connector screws for DVI connector to go in. Built quality is not good. I feel this is just like cheap board.
Motherboard screws are missing.

Other Thoughts: If not missing or incorrect parts, I would rate this board 4 stars.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/18/2008 1:47:19 PM

Rating + 5 Very nice motherboard


Pros: I bought this motherboard to design around a HTPC to mostly playback Blu Ray movies. Most know that HD content can be a struggle for some PCs especially ones where you ask them to use the onboard video (IGP). This one delivers. I'm using an E8400 Core2Duo processor (no overclocking) with 4 gigs of A-data ram. It plays Blu Ray and averages between 10 - 15% CPU utilization on one of the cores during playback! That is saying a lot for onboard graphics. So far so good.

Cons: Be aware that by default the BIOS for this motherboard uses IDE and not AHCI. If you do not enable AHCI the 5th and 6th SATA input on the motherboard will not be enabled. Unfortunately, I found this out the hard way and thought a hard drive was bad when it wasn't. Also, this motherboard came with the wrong I/O panel. It reversed where DVI and VGA are supposed to be. I wrote Zotac an e-mail and they were aware of the issue and sent me the correct I/O panel but it will be a bit of a pain having to break down the PC again once it arrives to install it. I was able to drill holes in the one they did send and it is working OK.

5 out of 5 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/4/2008 6:51:52 PM

Rating + 5 Update


Pros: I haven't tried to tweek it yet, but after I installed the ZOTAC ZT-85TEK2P-FSL GeForce 8500 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card , the eye candy started. The windows experience rating was 4.6 with just the onboard graphics, and after it jump to 5.4 which by the way was the lowest value on this system. But even so it performs almost as good as my 9800GTX on my other system for $50.00 cheaper than the 9800GTX alone.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: I love Nvidia products!

2 out of 8 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/4/2008 11:00:56 AM

Rating + 5


Pros: 6 satas, hdmi, Hybrid SLI,overall a pretty nice layout for the headers and power connections. Plenty of room to work with, just might want to plug in the cpu power before installing in case if your using an aftermarket heatsink like the Asus Silent Knight II or a Zalman 9500or 9700

Cons: none so far

Other Thoughts: Rosewill Conqueror WBK Triple 120mm Fans Steel ATX Mid tower Computer Case with Side Panel,
RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply - Retail , Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail, ASUS Silent Knight II 92mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail, A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model ADQVE1B16K - Retail, Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM, SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black PATA Model SH-S202N - OEM, ZOTAC ZT-85TEK2P-FSL GeForce 8500 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail, Vista score 5.6

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

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