Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus

Name: Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus
Brand: Zotac

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:00 AM EDT

Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test systems consumed using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power the base platform configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the processors alone.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

The Zotac ZBOX Nano XS sips power. Even with a dual-core CPU, DX11-class graphics core, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD (among many other components), the system consumed only 11 wats at idle. And under load, that number jumped up to only 28 watts. With those numbers, the Nano XS consumed slightly more power than its predecessors, but that's reasonable considering the XS's higher clocked CPU and GPU cores and USB 3.0 controller.

With such low power consumption, it should come as no surprise that the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 remains nice and quiet. While idling the unit is virtually silent--in an very quiet room, a slight hum from the unit's cooling fan can be heard, but if there is any ambient noise at all it will almost certainly drown it out. Under load, the fan in the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 does spin up and become somewhat more audible, but we'd still consider the system very quiet. Even under the most strenuous of workloads, the fan in the ZBOX Nano XS AD11 could never be considered loud.

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

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