ZOTAC IONITX-F-E Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz, dual-core) MCP7A-ION Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo

Pros: The layout of this board is great, and it plays 1080p full-bandwidth videos at 39 degrees C without a hiccup (stock fan, ambient temperature 64 degrees F, vented case on, no case fans). I had no problems installing anything, finding drivers, etc. Dual boots to both Windows 7 and Linux (Mythbuntu 9.10) no problems. Video playback test was in Linux, using the VDPAU extension. The mini-ITX formfactor is refreshingly small, if you're replacing micro-ATX you will find you now have oceans of space to play in.

Cons: The power plug is a 20-pin ATX plug, not 24-pin, and there are jumpers on one side of it, and a capacitor on the other. For this reason a 24-pin plug from a power supply WILL NOT FIT! (normally you can plug a 24-pin male plug into a 20-pin female socket, you just leave 4 of the male plugs hanging over the edge). Make sure your power supply has a 20-pin (or 20-pin + detachable 4-pin) type connector, not a full 24-pin connector, or else you will need an adapter. Also, there is no firewire on the board. If you want to use this as an HTPC motherboard you will not be able to get video from a set-top cable box via firewire AND get video from a PCIe tv-tuner card... unless you can find a TV tuner card with an onboard firewire port (and i don't think they make those, do they?)

Overall Review: Only 2 memory slots might not be enough for some people, however I do not consider this a "con" for such a small board, clearly intended for HTPC's. Since when does an HTPC need more than 4GB of memory?

Pros: The on-board Atom processor overclocks very easily to 2.1 GHz and is very stable at this clock speed. CPU temp is acceptable even when overclocked, but the GPU can get a bit toasty (load at around 70C). The ion gpu can be overclocked too. I was able to get a 20% overclock with it. With the overclocked settings, the Aeon-Stark skin for XBMC runs quiet smoothly. Google "ion heatsink mod" if you want to improve cooling on the cpu and gpu.

Cons: The atom cpu is incredibly weak, even the dual core model. This isn't an issue if you're using this as a home theater PC, since the ION GPU should be doing most of the heavy lifting and has some respectable processing power. However, if you want to do office work with this system or some light gaming, the CPU will hold you back. After overclocking the board, I've tried playing Heroes of Newerth. When playing at 1920x1200 and medium settings, I averaged 25 fps at the start of games, but the framerate would dip into single digits when things got hectic. To say the least, I felt it was a very poor gaming experience bordering on unplayable. Reducing the resolution and settings had very little effect on the FPS. Like I said before I think the GPU is decent, but the CPU is holding it back in some applications

Overall Review: This is a great board for an HTPC. It offers just enough graphical and cpu power to play any of my video files while also running my media library browser (XBMC) smoothly. It also is quiet small, enabling you to build a home theatre PC that's smaller than an Xbox 360 or PS3. That said, it is lousy for general desktop use. If you are building a desktop system, this board offers very poor performance for the price. I'd recommend that you go with a typical build like an athlon ii, phenom ii, or core i3.

Pros: Quiet, low heat, Runs Win7/XMBC/1080p no problem. Great board for an HTPC as long as you don't need an RMA.

Cons: No advanced RMA option. You need to send in your item, wait several days for processing then days more for return shipping.

Overall Review: No advanced RMA? Really? Even if I pay a free? No? Wow, even Dell does that! You're not going to repair my board, so just ship me my replacement the next day and let me use that packing material to return the defective one back. Bill me the price of the board and shipping now, credit back the board charge when you get the defective unit back. Simple. Just ask any of your competitors. Seriously, this is the first piece of PC tech that I could not get an advanced RMA for... and I've worked in hardware support for years. Having a system down for over a week just isn't acceptable service these days.

Pros: Motherboard continues to work well after five months.

Cons: Rebate still not paid after five months.

Overall Review: Will likely get another Intel Atom / Nvidia Ion for a HTPC. Will look for a more reputable brand.

Pros: Very small Nice to have a PCI-e slot (16x even). Wireless worked great with Windows 7 x64 Runs pretty cool even passively You can OC it to 2.0 GHz very easily in the BIOS Played DVD's (don't know about bluray) and HD TV just fine (ATI HD650 TV tuner) Uses very little power, even running full speed

Cons: Had issues with flash in 1080p even with Flash 10.1 Beta 3. The Atom/Ion just could not keep up. Lost of stuttering and mismatched audio. Thought maybe it was from me using wireless, so I wired it up and had the same issue. This was to be a replacement for cable, but with the problems with 1080p flash (mainly with Hulu Desktop, but was there with 1080p Youtube also), this was useless to me.

Overall Review: Could not return it due to the no return policy on this (wish I had read that before I got it). I had high hopes for this, but I think the Atom (even a dual core at 2.0) is just a little to underwhelming, even with the Ion for video. Maybe the final Flash 10.1 will fix it. I ended up going with a MATX build using a 45 w AM2 CPU and 785g board, useing just a little more power and costing less (even after I took a loss on selling this Zotac board).

Pros: Love the board has every option a person could want. Plenty of power for my set up anyways, using it for a htpc. Running ubuntu 9.04 with xbmc. Works better than my 3500 athlon 64 it replaced.

Cons: Runs pretty warm, touched the top of the case after it ran for a day or so and was hot, I've been turning it off at night and when not in use. Need to attach the fan it came with to see if it fixes the problem, was hoping to go fanless but alas not everything works as planned.

Overall Review: Would recommend to anyone wanting a powerful htpc. My HTPC: Zotac ION dual core board of course. 2 GB Kingston DDR2 800 80GB Western Digital Laptop hard drive. nMedia PC rf wireless keyboard and mouse combo Lite on slot load DVD rw IN WIN IW-BQ656 case holding it all together The whole system is connected to a 3TB freenas server and is awesome for watching movies/tv

Pros: ~Intel Atom Dual Core *much better than single core* ~Nvida ION chipset with some pretty sweet graphics for such a small Mobo ~PCI express slot for expansion of a Raid card ~2 Wireless N antenna connectors built into card, 1 already installed and another which just needs an additional cable, with room in back for external antenna mount.

Cons: It's a tight fit for all of the features on the Mobo. You need to punch out the metal on the back plate before installing this Mobo. I think this is because Zotac decided to ship a generic back plate for all of it's motherboard to save on cost.

Overall Review: Installed the mobo in a Rosewill RC-CIX-01. I had to remove the power supply before installing the mobo due to lack of space. I like that they include a molex to sata power converter for those who want to install three Sata devices in there case, I just don't have any additional room due to the mini-itx case I chose to go with.

Pros: Absolutely Amazing. I'm using it as a BlueRay player for my media center. With this I can surf the web and watch movies from my server machine. I was thinking of getting a wi-fi blue ray player. They were 300 for the one I wanted and it wouldn't surf the net. It would only do Netflix, etc. This does everything. I loaded window 7 64 bit with no problems. Im using a Liteon Blue Ray Player. What a machine.

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: I'm using the Lian Li PC-Q07 case. I already had an Antec True Power 550 and a spare WD 320 gb sata drive. I dont need any more hard drive since this machine will automatically access my movies and photos on my windos vista server machine over the wi-fi.