Z77 mITX Round-Up: Five of the Best – MSI, Zotac, ASRock, EVGA and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on December 31, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- ASRock
- EVGA
- ZOTAC
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Z77
- mITX
Zotac Z77-ITX WiFi Conclusion
At the time of writing this conclusion, each 7-series mITX motherboard I have tested has used the same layout in their design – the CPU socket goes near the bottom and the chipset is at the top. I am beginning to wonder who thought this was a good idea – having everything this way round means that the socket presses up against the DRAM and PCIe slots, restricting cooler size and compatibility. It means that the CPU Power connector is in an awkward place onboard and power cables will have to stretch over the board to reach it – this is less of an issue on the Zotac board due to the included 8-pin extension cable in the box. The argument for this layout is usually a robust ‘well it puts the IO on the edge of the motherboard’. But the IO usually has the long thin cables designed to go anywhere – I have no issue stretching my SATA cables over my RAM to fit, or a front panel audio cable. However, big bulky power cables across the board and restrictive cooling due to socket area placement are not enticing prospects.
Enough of socket placement aside, the Zotac Z77-ITX WiFi has a number of good points to be mentioned. The video outputs on board are a novel interpretation of the ‘three digital output’ allowances. Normally we get a DVI-D, HDMI and a DP on almost all other mainstream channel Z77 motherboards – however Zotac have shaken up the market. We get two HDMI outputs (for dual screens, or sending video one way and audio the other), and a mini-DisplayPort. The mDP port is bolstered by the mDP to DP cable found in the motherboard box, meaning every modern digital display (except Apple’s Thunderbolt display) is covered. Kudos to Zotac on this design choice.
Also in hardware, we get dual Realtek 8111E GbE NICs alongside integrated WiFi, making sure all networking options are open. Unfortunately we do not get any network management software in the box to complement this design choice, despite the fact that Realtek has some proprietary software which should be almost free to include. We also get the perennial favorite of reviewers, system builders and troubleshooters alike – the power/reset switches (kind of rare for a mITX board) as well as a two-digit debug. Despite the extra cost these afford, I believe they are well worth the money on every motherboard in the market. Other hardware features onboard are an mSATA, two fan headers and an extended heatsink covering the power delivery.
There are also some poor hardware choices in this build, such as the Realtek ALC889 audio which failed our RMAA 192 kHz test. Almost all motherboard options I see are Realtek ALC892 or above, which should offer a better audio experience. It should also be mentioned we do not get any Realtek audio software included in the package either.
On the software side, the driver CD requires a manual installation of all the drivers rather than the painless silent install we are becoming used to. There are no software utilities to speak of for overclocking or fan controls – the only way to control the fans is via the BIOS. For the BIOS itself, we really only have a colored skin on top of the normal BIOS options, rather than anything embracing the graphical BIOS concept of interactivity. As a downside as well, SATA configuration on the BIOS tested defaulted to IDE rather than the preferred AHCI.
In the modern motherboard industry it is very hard for a smaller manufacturer like Zotac to get a design win. In certain aspects Zotac have achieved it, plugging in some functionality into this mITX board that no other manufacturer has. But it gets let down by other design decisions and the lack of interoperability between the user and the system itself. Putting a Zotac motherboard in a build all comes down to price, and given that I have seen it on Newegg for $130 one week then $163 the next means that you may have to pick and choose the best moment if you want this board.
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Bullwinkle J Moose - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Hey yeah, Ian haz a good pointThat Crappy Gigabyte H61n-USB3 doesn't have Chipset USB3
But it does however boot just fine to a USB3 Windows to go drive at USB3 speeds
It also boots to Linux and XP due to the Non-Locked down Bios so we wouldn't want that either would we
and it takes a full 9 seconds to boot XP compared to the super de duper fast 7 second Windows 8
So we should spend more money and get locked into a closed system
After all, that is the future!
Limitations are fun so be happy as we lock down the Internet as well
After all, there are scarey Monsters out there
A man has to know his limitations
Clint Eastwood
Bullwinkle J Moose - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Ian haz a good point about the memory tooThat Gigabyte H61 board only takes up to 16GB of RAM
How much do these Z77 boards take by the way?
Was it this site or Maximum PC where the reviewers stated that in everyday use, you will notice no difference in speed between Sata 2 & 3 when you are using the latest and greatest SSD so I probably don't need the RAID capability on my H61 either
Keep up the good work Ian
Death666Angel - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
It seems that someone just discovered sarcasm. Good for you!mczak - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
H61 is not limited to one single sided DIMM per channel, double sided are just fine. It only accepts one per channel (at least it's specced that way) but since none of these mini-ITX boards have more than two memory slots this wouldn't matter at all here (max memory is still 2x8GB regardless).Frankly I'm not sure losing PCIe 3.0 is a big deal with mini-itx boards in any case but either way it isn't exactly true there are h61 boards supposedly supporting this (as it's got nothing to do with the chipset anyway all the pcie 3.0 signals coming directly from the cpu, though it would require bios support).
This leaves us with losing SATA 6 Gbps - this might indeed make some minimal difference in real world, provided you use a SSD and not a HD.
The major point imho (aside from overclocking) would be missing USB 3.0, which obviously makes a big difference when using external harddisks etc. Granted that could be done with separate usb controller but probably not a good idea since space is limited.
H61 IIRC also will lose the possibility of using 3 display outputs simultaneously. Maybe something like H77 would make more sense for mini-ITX as it pretty much only loses overclocking (plus the ability to split the 16 x pcie 3.0 lanes into 2x8 though I guess this has nothing to do with the chipset itself really, but in any case it won't be missed on mini-itx). So if you don't want to overclock, you wouldn't miss anything at all with H77 on a mini-itx board.
Etern205 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
I also notice that as well, most sites will only review Z77 mITX boards instead of H61 or H77. Not all will need a Z77, Z77 is mostly for enthusiast or for those who are into the technical stuffs. For the average Joe or Jane any mITX board will do. If you tell them it's H61 or Z77, they probably won't care too much on the difference.piroroadkill - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
You can't easily upgrade the chipset later. With a small up-front investment, you get the full feature set, and why not?Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, January 6, 2013 - link
Oh Boo Hoo, I can't easily upgrade to an overclocking chipset or void the warranties of my hardware componentsI am just stuck with a totally stable system
Boo Hoo
How can I possibly break this ?
What has the World become ?
Poor me
Boo Hoo
Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, January 6, 2013 - link
Why not?Because the H61 is exactly what I wanted
and anything else is NOT !
can you hear me now?
EVGA KINGPIN - Friday, November 19, 2021 - link
I still use my Z77 FTW board , have had it running without turning it off since 2015. evga is the best ,also my EVGA GTX 980 KINGPIN is still running strong,,,thanks EVGA for quality products, JRTsherlockwing - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Where is the Gigabyte?