Comments on: Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom ION HTPC Review

By: JohnSmith

JohnSmith — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:10:14 +0000

Beware: I have found some Nvidia Videocards do NOT work with Sony TVs very well. During boot, the POST messages would show up fine, but then the screen would just go black and the PC would stop loading (no error, no reboot). I was forced to use an ATI card which worked fine.

The unworkable combo:
Sony 46″ Z4100
DVI to HDMI cable
ASUS EN8600GT Silent (nVidia Chipset)

By: Derek

Derek — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:04:36 +0000

I checked what I did and it appears to be correct. The power LED cable is connected with the letters facing towards the I/O, if that makes a difference. It’s specific behavior is: OFF or SLEEP=slowly blinking blue light, ON= no light. I made no changes to the BIOS and a cursory look revealed no setting to govern this behavior.

By: James Rintamaki

James Rintamaki — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:18:26 +0000

@Derek, hmmm, I must have messed up on the power LED plug because mine is on when it’s on (off when off) and it’s annoyingly bright! Guess I’ll have to double check my handy work later tonight….

By: Derek

Derek — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:13:42 +0000

So much for the “convection” M350 design. Using Speedfan, I measured my temperature under 50-60% continuous load to be 98C after 2 hours. Fanless is not the way to go.

Using the Zotac cpu fan, I brought the temp. down to 55-60C under the same load. I found the noise from the fan unnoticeable at 6 feet so I will likely just keep it. I may purchase a 40mm case fan, if I can find a quiet one, to see if I can reduce the temp. further.

Thanks for your help and for this great build. It was exactly what I was looking for.

PS: You didn’t note the niftiest feature of the M350: that the power light is off when the PC is on and on when it is off. Perfect for a media center, IMO.

PSS: I had the same problem with I/O shield, so it wasn’t a bad stamp in your case. It’s bad design.

By: James Rintamaki

James Rintamaki — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:18:53 +0000

@Derek, I would definitely use the fan. Supposedly, you can opt to run without one, but espeically in a small case such as the M350 — even with the “open air” sort of design — I wouldn’t go with out using a fan. Have you gone into the bios (or downloaded http://www.speedfan.com ) to check the internal temps?

That being said, I’m not a big fan of the included fan as it is kind of loud. However, I am using it and everything is staying cool enough (I don’t remember the exact temp off the top of my head, but I want to say it stays around 35c – I’ll let you know when I get home what the exact temp is)

By: Derek

Derek — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:06:15 +0000

I just built my own media center based on the specs above but I notice it gets quite hot and I’m a little worried about it. Have you had any heat issues going fanless with the M350?

By: Savio

Savio — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:14:03 +0000

Can you make a review for the Proton?