Opening the box the first things we find are the manuals / paperwork / driver disk and I/O shield. As you can see it looks like it had a bit of a rough ride in transit with the internal packing slightly mangled, the outer shows little signs of a major knock so hopefully the IONITX is undamaged.

Before looking at the motherboard I’ll take a look at the accessories.

First out of the box are the manuals and warranty info, it would seem the warranty varies according to where you live, which seems a little odd, but that’s the way it is. There is a Quick Installation Guide, written in multiple languages, to get you up and running asap but as it seems to be a booklet which gets sent out with every motherboard and as such CPU fitting info it is pretty much irrelevant for this board, much more useful is the Users Manual which goes more in depth with info such as board layout diagrams, connection details for the front panel switches and indicators and bios info.

Next we have the driver disk, complete with case sticker inside the sleeve, which is, as everyone knows, the absolute most important PC accessory known to man. Also as a little bonus, courtesy of NVIDIA, is a coupon for a 20% discount off of the SIMS 3.

Moving a little deeper into the box, before getting to the IONITX, we have the I/O shield, which like all of the accessories is individually bagged.

The next item out of the box is the wi-fi antenna. The onboard wi-fi uses what I believe to be a standard screw in connector so if you should need to you can fit a bigger antenna for better reception.

Also included are 3 Sata cables, which is pleasantly surprising, as usually unless you buy a high end board you only get 1 or 2, Zotac supplies cables for ALL the internal Sata ports, which is a very nice inclusion.

The only other cable supplied is a Molex to Sata power converter, again a very useful inclusion as, from looking around, it would appear, for some unknown reason, manufacturers of mini ITX power supplies seem to fit several, 3-4 typically, Molex connectors on their power supplies and only 1 Sata power connector, personally I would think the opposite would make more sense these days.

Finally also included in the box, before taking a look around the Zotac IONITX, is an optional fan, I would imagine unless the case the Zotac IONITX has a reasonable amount of airflow, and I would imagine this is possibly unlikely in a mini ITX case, then this fan will almost certainly be required. I will try it passive at first and monitor the temperatures under load and then fit it to see exactly how much difference it makes and indeed if it is necessary.

Next Page - Physical Layout - Part 2