Opening up and working on the Zotac Zbox Nano AD10 Plus is surprisingly easy, despite the machines ultra small form factor. While some machines in this class require poking and prodding with shims and screwdrivers, to pop fragile plastic clips, the Zbox Nano can be opened up by removing four thumbscrews, which double as the machine’s soft rubber feet.
With the system opened up, its motherboard, hard drive, RAM, and mini-PCIe Wi-Fi controller are easily accessible. There is only a single DIMM slot in the device, which supports up to 4GB of RAM and a standard 2.5” HD with 9.5mm Z-Height can be used. Since this is the “Plus” model, a Samsung 320GB hard drive was included along with 2GB of DDR3-1066 RAM. Although adequate, we found this configuration to drag performance down, somewhat. The AMD E-350 APU powering the Zbox Nano AD10 is no benchmark barn-burner, so faster storage and more RAM make noticeable improvements to performance and enhance the overall user experience.
Although not visible in our pics, there is an AMD E-350 APU on the hidden side of the motherboard’s PCB, along with AMD’s M1 chipset. There is also a slim heatsink with barrel type fan, which exhausts air out of the side of the Zbox Nano. We found the single fan to be very quiet and the machine never gets warm or emits a ton of heat.
Finally, here’s a shot of the Nano mounted to the back of an LCD monitor using the included mount. Pair this machine with a wireless desktop and a slim monitor and that’s about as small a footprint as possible, without moving to a mobile form factor.
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