Conclusion
Although this is an ITX system which is mostly used for HTPC’s and media servers, I have been using this system for a little bit as my main system because my other system went down. I thought this Zotac setup would be good enough to just surf the web, listen to music, and perform other basic needs. It proved to be more than I thought it would.
While the benchmarks and everything don’t seem to be all that impressive, this system marks a perfect little media server which is what I have turned it in to. I have all my movies and music stored on this currently, using the wireless and PS3MediaServer software to broadcast it to my PS3. It works perfectly with no lag and no encoding problems at all, which was a big surprise to me.
Now you probably wouldn’t want to use this system for gaming. I found that I would have liked to have a few more SATA ports on this board to add even more storage space. Most people who are building a media server throw in a bunch of hard drives.
Overall, ThinkComputers gives the Zotac IONITX-P-E Mini-ITX Motherboard an 8 out of 10 score. You can currently find this on my favorite online retailer for $180.
Pros:
– Great for a media server
– DDR3 up to 8gigs
– Wireless
– Dual core
Cons:
– Only 3 SATA ports
– A PCIe x1 Would been nice above the PCIe x16 slot for a sound card