| Zotac H55ITX-C-E Mini-ITX WiFi Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by Servando Silva | |
| Wednesday, 13 October 2010 | |
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Page 7 of 17
Zotac H55ITX-C-E OverclockingNow that we've explored the BIOS let's get started with some basic overclocking. Last time I tested the H55N-USB3 to check max BCLK frequency, and then I moved to CPU overclocking. This time, I really wanted to do the same, but all my efforts were useless. I took my trusty Intel Core i5 655K CPU and installed it in the Zotac H55ITX-C-E. That way, I was already sure CPU wouldn't be a limiting, and since I'm using a pair of G.Skill ECOs DIMMs, all I needed to test was the motherboard itself. Here's a screenshot with the CPU at stock settings with Hyper Threading and Speedstep enabled.
Intel Core i5 655K at stock frequencies with Speedstep enabled. The reason I said my efforts were useless is because it seems I found a wall when overclocking at 175-180 BCLK frequency. It wasn't that bad, because I could reach a completely stable setup running at 3.8GHz with stock CPU vCore. However, I wasn't able to try higher frequencies with higher voltages because of the BCLK limiting. After that, I decided to use the magic unlocked multiplier to try some higher frequencies but, guess what? It seems this BIOS wasn't done to work with unlocked processors (even if Zotac says so in their homepage). The Core i5 655K comes with a 24x multiplier, which can be easily raised to more than 40x values. However, while I was able to increase it to 26x, every time I tried higher values, the motherboard would post at 24x (default). So, that's where my adventure ends, because I wasn't able to pass 3.8GHz with the unlocked multiplier. Perhaps, a newer BIOS version could fix this up.
Intel Core i5 655K running fully stable at 3.8GHz with stock heatsink. This was our best result with the H55ITX-C-E. My second hypothesis was that it wasn't a BCLK limiting, but more of a processor limiting. Not because it couldn't reach BCLKs or because it was a very bad sample, because I've tested it before and it did excellent, especially on air-cooling conditions. Somewhere, I had heard about Zotac having issues with Clarkdale CPUs regarding iGPU frequency. I'll easily confirm this later when 3D tests get done.
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Comments
In an additional note, I just tested a pair of laptops just to check power consumption and they take the same amount of energy, but both of them are slower than this platform (4 years old Intel Core Duo CPUs). That makes me want to throw my laptop through the window!
I've got a Core i5-750 running in mine. Works great.
What kind of a review is this?
Actually, if you check their page and download their Product Details File you'll see a Processors Support List, where you'll find: Core i3, Core i5 and Core processors with Intel HD graphics only. Core i7 or Lynnfield CPUs are not mentioned. Some other sites (bit-tech) have also reported several problems with Lynnfield CPUs, so I think they're not recommended, but still work.
If you go to this Zotac page: #zotacusa.com/downloads/?cat=238 about halfway down is a file called "Tested CPU and memory list" last updated Sept 1st. It lists Core-i7's and all the i5's in there. That's what I went with when I built my Core i5-750 system 3 weeks ago. Everything's running stable, but I have not overclocked anything.
As long as you don't overclock it, I don't think you'll have a problem. Even a light OC without adding voltage would be fine, I suppose.
I had written a long post about the power consumption of this board, and then the page refresh comes along and clears everything I've written, right before I was to post it!!
Anyway, the short version of what I wrote is:
There is a contradiction with your statements about power consumption. In the Conclusion, low power consumption is listed as one of the Pros, but on the Power Consumption page, you say that the board draws up to 20% more power than its competitor (in the most important area: idle power. Power consumption during load is far less important).
Too bad, otherwise this would have been a good board!
I totally agree with your statement:
> ...it would be nice to see an energy saving function/program
> to turn off some components when they're not being used
About your comment, I still think the whole platform consuming so small quantities of energy against its performance (overall efficiency) is a pro. I know, this isn't the best one, as the contenders consume less power, but still it's a great choice for low power consumption which micro-ATX/full-ATX motherboards can't reach.
Zotac still needs to improve their software apartment, as they offer no especial software for their motherboards yet.
Thank you for your replies!
Servando, aren't there any m-ATX boards that can reach these power consumption numbers? I wonder how come that is... - I know a bigger board has more features (and they consume energy), but can't these extra/unused features be turned off on some boards?
I don't think undervolting is something I'll do for my HTPC, so I guess that means I should look at mini-ITX, to get a low power consumption?
I'm just surprised by what you said about the larger boards always drawing more power... - I thought the larger area for the circuitry was good for lowering power consumption and heat?
I thought you were referring to how the smaller size of this Zotac board made it draw more power when you wrote:
> But remember the H55ITX has got the most crowded PCB design because it included
> 6 S-ATA ports and a WiFi module with 2 antennas, which might explain.
It's not a rule that larger motherboards consume more power, but it's very common as they have more ICs, traces, and especially considering they have more CPU phases for voltage regulation. The reason they are bigger is because they need more space to add components. That's why you see X58 motherboard on a E-ATX PCB. More components=more power needed.
Also, there's nothing bad on under-volting your HTPC CPU. You'll gain some extra watts, it might produce less heat and work as fast as it's working now. It's not like you're going to under-volt it a lot, just some milli-volts (depends on your CPU). You should give it a try!
If I may, I have one last hardware question:
Does this Zotac board support PUIS/PM2 ("Power-up in standby", that is: choosing to not spin up a non-OS drive at once during start-up)?
#en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up
Or do you know of any other board you could suggest that supports this feature?
My case is going to be large enough (with enough airflow) to house a few extra drives (aside from the SDD for the OS), but if all drives spin up at the same time when the system is started, that will cause problems for the small external power supply (the power spike when everything starts at once will be a problem for the power brick). In fact, as long as the OS (probably Win 7 64 bits) can recognize the non-OS drives, they would not have to spin up at all - until I try to access a file there.
I haven't bought anything yet (aside from the case), but to get the best possible power consumption I will probably buy a Winmate 130W DC-DC converter and power that with a high efficiency 150W AC-DC power brick. I haven't decided on the AC-DC adapter yet, but I'll try to find one with an efficiency of over 90%.
I would probably start out with having just two 2TB 5400rpm 3.5" drives (aside from the SSD and the Blu-Ray ODD), which the PSU/adapter can handle, but I have the space to add 4 more drives on top of that, to make the HTPC into a file server / HTPC combo. Of course, this could only happen if:
a) the drives don't spin up at once
b) there are enough S-ATA connectors (Zotac's has 6, as you said, so there's a limit)
Someone told me that the old Intel D945GCLF2 board supported staggered spin-up, but I don't know about any of the motherboards that are of interest today.
(the page loaded earlier and I didn't start to write until 2 min ago)
Anyway, to answer your questions: I want to avoid going up too much in wattage (not over 200W) to keep the system as efficient as possible.
It's just in the start-up phase that there's a problem as each drive draws around 20W when it spins up. Normally, I won't need for any of the disc drives to be spinning since they'll mostly be used for occasional manual backup (and perhaps once a week playing a movie from one of them). The best thing would be if none of the disc drives spin up when the system i started, but still have them accessible for when that's needed.
The AC-DC power brick supplies 19-20V DC to the DC-DC card that have the cables needed for the motherboard connection: silentpcreview.com/Winmate_DD-24AX
As you probably already read, high efficiency ranges between 20%-80% (sweet points are 20%, 50%, 80%)Load. If your ITX system takes 50 watts at idle mode, you'll be at 25% of your PSU, and let's say it takes around 100-130w at full load, you'll be at 50%-60% of your PSU, which is not bad at all.
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Very interesting, I have a HP s3320la cabinet with 160W power, you could use for this motherboard?, because seeing the recommended source (#s2.subirimagenes.com/imagen/previo/thump_59463612.png), not very far from mine (#s3.subirimagenes.com:81/imagen/previo/thump_59463581.png).