Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi mobo

Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi Features

• Support for Intel LGA755 CPUs including 65m, and 45m Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron Dual-Core and Celeron with 800-1,333MHz front side bus.
  
• Support for up to 95W TDP CPUs
  
• Nvidia MCP7A MCP (GeForce 9300 MCP)
  
• Two DDR2 DIMM slots for up to 8GB 667/800MHz
  
• Twelve USB 2.0 ports
  
• Two SATA 3Gbps ports
  
• One eSATA 3Gbps port
  
• One Realtek RTL8211CL Gigabit Ethernet
  
• Realtek ALC662 5.1 channel High-Definition audio codec
  
• Onboard VGA, DVI-D and HDMI with HDCP 1.3 content encryption support (two simultaneous display outputs supported)
  
• One PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot (full x16 bandwidth)

Board Layout

The GeForce 9300 MCP is a single chip product which makes it easier to squeeze it into such a small space. The passive aluminium heatsink strapped to the top of it actually gets volcanic when the board is running, and naturally more so when used heavily, so if you intend to shoehorn this little bad boy into a small box, make plans for some airflow.

The layout is generally very good although the two SATA ports are nestled between the MCP heatsink, DDR2 memory slots and PCI-Exprses 2.0 x16 slot. This means they require connecting up first unless you've got particularly nifty fingers.


And yes, you read that right - that's a full PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot for a graphics card. Technically, you can use up to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 or any other 95W, 1333MHz CPU and whatever graphics product you want - providing you have a compatible PSU and the space to accommodate it.

This makes it one of the best products for power density in a given space that exists, and potentially one mean gaming rig. In comparison, other mini-ITX boards have a PCI slot (Jetway JNC62K), a PCI-Express x1 slot (Intel DG45FC) or a PCI-Express x4 slot (J&W Minix 780G). Zotac even includes the usual Hybrid SLI option between GPU and IGP, but to be honest - we don't see this as a feature to ever bother with.


The four phase power for the CPU socket is pretty limiting and don't expect some liberal voltage adjustments and overclocking either - like most mini-ITX boards. However, the capacitors used are decent Nippon Chemicon solid aluminium capped, the MOSFETs are Power-PAK low profile and the chokes are environmentally sealed - all good. If you've got a particularly large heatsink, you might want to check the space between memory, northbridge and CPU socket because both sit literally just outside the CPU area which makes push-pin heatsinks in particular quite difficult to fit.


The pair of DDR2 slots allow space for several GB of memory and the performance of dual channel, which is not always seen in this form factor. The Realtek Gigabit Ethernet offers the standard high performance package, although we expected far, far better than the antiquated and poor quality Realtek ALC662 5.1 channel sound codec.