Photos Part 3: Dissection
I love taking things apart. Sometimes I can even get them back together in working order. Standard disclaimer applies here: Poking around inside a computer is a grand way to kill it. On the plus side the first bit here will not actually void your warranty if you don’t do something stupid, Zotac is OK with you replacing the ram and/or storage.
As mentioned on the previous page the rubber feet double as thumbscrews, unscrew them and remove the bottom plate and you’re faced with this:
Now that’s some easy access! Upgrading is simplicity itself and might not be a bad idea as 2GB of ram isn’t very much, really. Given that you can find a 4GB stick for $20 or less, I think it is worthwhile. We’ll take a closer look at the ram and SSD next:
The SSD even has a chip of ram for cache, this isn’t a complete cheap-out like some companies have done SSD wise (cough, dell, cough) in the past. This thing is for real! We’ll benchmark it later.
In the mean time, here is the zbox disassembled as much as you can without voiding the warranty:
If you’ve been reading our reviews, you can probably guess what comes next…
Bye bye warranty, hello top of the motherboard. Mostly it is CPU/FCH cooler and IO ports. Left behind in the case is a board that contains everything for the front panel:
It is connected to the main board by this connector. Tons of pins here, I suspect this is a full PCIe connection among other things.
Yes, that is a solder ball nearly bridging those two solder points. No I didn’t notice it before putting the zbox back together. Yes I’ll be taking it apart again.
Pulling the cooler off we’re faced with the top of the motherboard. Pretty densly packed, though less so than some ATX boards I have seen.
Here’s the CPU and FCH
If you’re curious what the guts of the cooler look like you’re in luck, I was too.
Pretty standard setup, copper slab with fins soldered to it and a fan aimed down it’s throat. No heatpipes here. Given that the CPU/GPU uses 40nm lithography and has a TDP of less than 12 watts, odds are none are needed. Naturally I’ll check. The fan is a PWM fan, pretty snazzy for a tiny thing.
This operation is the sort of wild engineering that Zotac is famous for in the east, I’m coming more of it is going to come to American shores in the future, it’s wonderful stuff.
Now I’ll seal things back up and we’ll move onward to testing.
