ZOTAC Goes For Iris Pro in Their New ZBOX E-Series Gaming Mini-PCs
by Ian Cutress on March 10, 2014 1:33 PM EST
So far there have been only a few ways to get hold of an Iris Pro 5200 enabled machine. The first CPUs with these processors were in laptops, until Apple put some in the 21.5” iMacs and GIGABYTE pushed for its BRIX Pro that achieved Steam Box status. Fast forward a few months from those announcements and now ZOTAC is getting in the mix by releasing a pair of ZBOX E-Series mini-PCs.
The two models will be the EI750 and EI730, differentiated by their processor. The EI750 comes with the i7-4770R, the top performing Iris Pro HD 5200 CPU, whereas the EI730 is with the i5-4570R, with lower clock speeds, no hyperthreading and a smaller L3 cache.
The ZBOX E-Series are essentially in direct competition with the BRIX Pro in this market, and ZOTAC's aim is to win on z-height. These machines in the images look longer in the x/y dimensions but shorter in the z-dimension, while still retaining VESA 75/100 mounting. Official dimensions put the system at 188x188x51 mm, which seems very small for a 65W CPU.
Both models come with two DDR3L SO-DIMM slots for up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 (1600 supported, ZOTAC have told me the latest BIOS enables up to DDR3-2133), space for a 2.5” SSD, dual DisplayPort and a DVI port, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, onboard Intel 7260 2T2R 802.11ac WiFi and four USB 3.0 ports. ZOTAC will also sell Plus models with 8 GB DDR3-1600 CAS 11 and a 1TB 5400 HDD included.
ZOTAC is aiming for a March launch, with the EI750 base model retailing at £520, or £650 for the Plus edition. The EI730 base has an MSRP of £430, and the Plus edition will be £560. US pricing should be coming to me soon.
| ZOTAC ZBOX E-Series | ||
| EI750 | EI730 | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4770R | Intel Core i5-4570R |
| Cores | 4C / 8T | 4C / 4T |
| Base Frequency | 3200 | 2700 |
| Turbo Frequency | 3900 | 3200 |
| L3 Cache | 6MB | 4MB |
| IGP | Iris Pro 5200 | Iris Pro 5200 |
| DRAM | 2 x SO-DIMM | 2 x SO-DIMM |
| Display Outputs |
2 x DP 1 x DVI-D |
2 x DP 1 x DVI-D |
| SATA |
1 x SATA 6 Gbps 1 x mSATA 6 Gbps |
1 x SATA 6 Gbps 1 x mSATA 6 Gbps |
| Ethernet | 2 x GbE | 2 x GbE |
| WiFi | Intel 7260 802.11ac 2T2R | Intel 7260 802.11ac 2T2R |
| USB | 4 x USB 3.0 | 4 x USB 3.0 |
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Flunk - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Who buys a "gaming pc" to play current games in medium at low res?I mean, it's just as useful to say it's much more powerful than the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Hrel - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
Poor peopleDaniel Egger - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Every time I tell people (here) that I occasionally play games on my 6750M I get laughed at. The HD Iris Pro 5200 is only marginally faster than that and yet this 3.5 year newer GPU is for a "gaming machine"? Does not make a whole lot of sense to me. If you look at the review here that thing is not capable of even running a single current game in FHD with more than 25fps and that's supposedly without the throttling that's certainly about to occur in that small housing...As it happens I'm currently checking out my options for a small living room PC capable of some casual gaming. Neither AMD nor Intel IGP solutions seem to be a good fit for that. I'll probably get one of the smallest desktop PCs I can get and will fit a R260 or similar into that. That should result in plenty of FHD gaming power... at the same price I might add.
anandreader106 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
You get laughed at by superior master PC gaming race.You game at med/low res. You are not master. You are amateur.
I laugh at you.
zodiacsoulmate - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
6750m is hardly a mbile gaming graphic card, it falls far behind desktop buddies, AMD name it quite high but it doesn't do a good job.There are a lot development goes into GPU optimization to make it run fluent on AMD/NV gpus, for intel it's still quite new to the gpu match, but intel is very mature at their chip designs, Iris Pro is good.
Most of people play games on weak graphic cards, this doesn't make them amateur, a lot of esports player starts from very low end pc/notebook.
R260 is not going to give you anything better than 720p medium, if youwant single slot, grab a gtx750ti(although i doubt anyone make a single slot one), if yôu want a short one, grab gtx670 or 760 short edition(MSI/Asus have those), it will give you suffice power to play 1080p 40+fps
mobutu - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
When will these dumb manufacturers realize that at this small scale the only way to decently cool a 65W chip is to use the whole damn enclosure as a heatsink (as www.streacom.com does it)?Obviously, this zotac cannot cool it, the noise is to the roof and therefore the chip throttles thus not reaching its potential:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/systems/67173-zotac-...
Qwertilot - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Not cheap doing a full body, passive cooling, case heat sink though. Much the best solution I agree :) Give it a couple more generations and I might be tempted that way.jup68 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
http://www.hd-plex.com/8steve8 - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
we want iris pro in a little desktop, and are willing to accept a bit more volume to get a good cooling solution. this and the gigabyte pro should not have made it to the market...give me a gigabyte pro with an extra 6 inches of height with a vent with a decent cooler..
Hrel - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link
Looks like a pretty intriguing system. I was gonna put together a little NUC system for my bedroom (to hook up to the tv, combined with a NAS) but if I can just buy one that performs reasonably well I'll probably just do that. I look forward to a full review, preferably with a focus on durability and media playback functionality.