Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 6, 2015 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano provided us with an opportunity to evaluate one of the more configurable, but passively cooled Bay Trail UCFF PCs in the market. Passively cooled systems are either very costly (particularly if they integrate powerful CPUs) or downright abysmal in performance (when they integrate the low-end / low-power CPUs such as the older Atoms). Zotac's offering with the ZBOX CI320 nano aims to strike a balance. $140 for a barebones configuration is quite good in this market segment. A fully loaded PLUS model, along with a pre-installed licensed version of Windows 8.1 is lesser than $260. It is frankly quite difficult to build such a compact and passively cooled system for that price on one's own.
One of the aspects we were worried about was thermal throttling, but the ZBOX CI320 nano surpassed our expectations. The chassis never got extremely hot (reaching only around 68 C, even after extended thermal stress with a couple of power viruses).
Pretty much the only downside of the unit is the relatively bad performance of Bay Trail when compared to Haswell. However, we shouldn't be really complaining for the price since the system seems to operate quite nicely for day-to-day use. The BIOS does need some work - particularly to ensure that cores are not in the max performance mode always in the default configuration. The SSD supplied with the PLUS model could be a bit better, but that is not an issue if the end-user buys a barebones configuration.
All in all, Zotac manages to deliver a very price-effective passive mini-PC in the ZBOX CI320 nano. Along with the ECS LIVA and the Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano in the market, the days of users having to spend an arm and leg for passively cooled systems with decent performance are history.
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andychow - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Yes is has an IR sensor, but from what I read it's not very good and doesn't seem to wake up from sleep via IR, even if the option is in the bios, it doesn't work.lianthus - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I love that you guys added XMBC to the tests, one thing though, what I have the most trouble knowing is how well these low powered chips do when playing a Hi10bit mkv file. Anime now is mostly encoded this way and my old ZBOX cannot properly play the files regardless of whether or not I'm using wireless, wired, or local playback. If you could add this one piece to your reviews it would save me a tremendous amount of trouble, as nobody ever seems to post anything about playing back these files. It is literally the most important part of my purchasing choices when it comes to media PCs like this one.bobbozzo - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Also we need to worry about h.265 performance.saiga6360 - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
The latest version of XBMC or Kodi as it is now called supports HVEC or H265 encodes. As for Hi10p, not sure if there is hardware acceleration support but the latest Celerons and AMD APUs can run these MKV encodes in software just fine up to 1080p. I use the latest Kodi version 5.0 in OpenELEC and I can run these files on a Zotac AMD E-450 APU and a Chromebox 1.4 Celeron CPU.hlovatt - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Any chance of reviewing the Mac mini to seen ow it compares?takeship - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
It would seem to me that a passively cooled box whose BIOS fails to implement dynamic frequency stepping properly (or apparently at all) needs more than "a little work". It's inexcusable to ship a product with an issue like that. I wonder Ganesh if you tested or ran into issues with APCI sleep/wake states as well? Those have been notable pain points of Zotac on other boxes. And given the storage perf numbers, are we sure that SATA6 is actually being used, instead of say 3? I've looked at these Zotac boxes with lust for years now, but ultimately have always avoided because of questions concerning driver/firmware. It looks like Zotac still hasn't gotten their house in order.zepi - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
HTPC Credentials needs to include H265 decode tests. That is soon going to be crucial.Wineohe - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
I would like to see these small form factor PC's move to a 12V supply instead of 19V. They would be more versatile for mobile use.AgeOfPanic - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
I don't understand how they cannot enable HD audio bitstreaming under Windows and have it work under Linux. Is there a logic behind it?saiga6360 - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link
Driver issues