ZOTAC ZBOX AD12 Plus nano PC Review Entertainment PCs   Page 1

Reviewer: Tyler Bernath Article Publish Date: 9/27/2012

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

The last time we looked at a mini pc it was the ZOTAC ID84 just a week or two ago, and I came away saying that it was the best mini pc I have seen in the 300$ price range. After that review – and after talking with ZOTAC – we lined up another sample in the form of a ZBOX nano Plus.

Inside that same price range ZOTAC has released the ZBOX nano Plus AD12, instead of an Intel Atom processor we have a small surprise from AMD, which to be frank is what I like to see in mini pcs. Intel Atom processors – however popular – seem to lack the power and raw throughput of its high end cousins, this is mostly due to the crippled nature of the memory controller and the very small onboard cache.

AMD recently released the new “Trinity” APUs and we took our first look at the new chips a few months back when we looked at the Arctic MC101. These chips have shown great promise when paired with the right components and so today we are going to look at the little brother of the A10 – the E2-1800.

Tucked away inside the small footprint of the AD12 Plus is a full complement of raw computing power and energy savings. Normally these two don’t mix well at all but ZOTAC has carefully chosen each component they put inside this nano ZBOX. So without further delay let’s take a look at the newest ZBOX.