Zotac Zbox Plus ID45 Review

 

 

Testing

To give you a point of comparison, we’re displaying these results against three processors, and their integrated graphics chips. The Intel i3 3220 with its integrated HD 2500 graphics solution represents a low cost desktop option from Intel. The AMD A10-6800K and A10-5800K represent our other point of comparison, which is perhaps more relevant due to the more advanced on-board graphics. However, we used these as a point of comparison so you can get an idea how the Zotac ID45 performs in relation to these low cost desktop options. Generally, our tests are based on processing power performance, and graphics performance. Now, since the ID45 is constrained to a laptop processor, it isn’t entirely fair to be comparing this to their more power hungry and higher heat producing desktop equivalents. Also, at the same time, the ID45 contains an Nvidia GT640, which we do expect to perform better than the on-board solutions and so again, it isn’t entirely fair to make a direct comparison to the other. However, this does give a very good point of reference as to just how well the ID45 as a system can perform, and also give you an idea of how other potential options if you’re interested in a product like this will perform.

In this review, we run the ID45 through a series of intensive tests which simulate realistic scenarios of what you may run yourself if you had the system. It is worth bearing in mind that all of our tests were done on units as if they had just been taken out of the box. We didn’t optimise any of the hardware used by overclocking, undervolting, or any other BIOS tweaking. However, the ID45 does come with a very locked down BIOS as you’d expect with most factory built systems, and also due to the laptop processor, there’s very few options when it comes to tweaking with the system. In contrast, the AMD 5800K and 6800K, and also to some extent the i3 3220 would allow for additional tweaking, which should be considered if you’re in the market for a low end system with the ability to game.

Our CPU-z and GPU-z screenshots show us the specification you can find on the box. The processor and RAM clock speeds are all as displayed on the box, with the 1.9GHz dual core i3 3227U processor, with 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM. The GPU-z screenshot does show us the clock speeds of the GPU core as well as the vRAM, which may be useful to know since this information isn’t on the box.

 

CPU-z Processor

 

CPU-z Memory

 

GPU-z Graphics