Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus

The exterior of the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus is pretty cool, but for geeks like us, it’s the technology crammed within the system that’s most ogle worthy. Thankfully, Zotac makes it incredibly easy to open up the Nano XS should a user want to service something on the interior.


Removing The Thumbscrews / Feet

The four rubber feet on the bottom of the system double as thumbscrews. Simply unscrew them and the bottom of the unit pops right off.


A Look Inside The ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus

With the bottom panel removed, users have easy access to the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus’ single SO-DIMM slot and mSATA port. The “non-Plus” barebones ZBOX Nano XS AD11 will ship with these slots empty, but the Plus model we have here includes 2GB of DDR-1333 RAM and a 64GB mSATA solid state drive from Kingston, although Zotac points out that some machines may ship with different solid state drives in the future. We should also mention that although the mSATA slot supports 6Gbps speeds, this SSD has a SATA 3Gps interface.


The ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus' Motherboard, APU, and Chipset

There are a half dozen screws to remove inside the Nano XS should a user want to remove the motherboard, although there’s little reason to do this. With the motherboard removed, however, the system’s single cooling fan is visible. The fan sucks air in from one side of the system and exhausts it out the other. A single heatsink cools both the AMD E-450 APU and M1 chipset.

For this unfamiliar, the E-450 APU differs from the E-350 used in previous-generation ZBOX Nano systems in that it has a slightly higher frequency (1.65GHz vs. 1.6GHz), a higher clocked GPU (Radeon HD 6320 vs. Radeon HD 6310), and official support for faster DDR3 memory.
 


Tags:  SFF, Zotac, Nano, system, HTPC, E-450, ZBox
Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

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