Home server: Zotac IONITX-A and CFI-A8989 chassis

The Zotac IONITX-A board, especially, needs no introduction, many of them have already heard and know about it. So finally, and in our village the opportunity to purchase it.

Briefly:
- miniITX format;
- Intel Atom N330 processor, GeForce 8400M GS;
- RAM up to 4GB (in Dual-Mode);
- Estimated price - $ 230.
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Package Contents:
- Fee Zotac IONITX-A with a massive radiator;
- 3 (not greedy !!!) SATA loop;
- Wi-Fi antenna;
- Fan on the processor;
- 4th black bolt (more on that later :));
- Power supply with a separate power cord (Delta APD-90CD, Made in China);
- A little waste paper;
- CD with drivers (please note - under Windows).


The first thing I encountered in this board is that it is completely incomprehensible how to hook the propeller onto the processor. I will not bore with stories about my attempts to sculpt the hero of Krylov's fable "Monkey and Glasses" out of myself, I will immediately proceed to the decision. The bolts are screwed straight into the long radiator holes.



A 2GB RAM + SATA 200GB WD + 22 monitor was immediately plugged into the board. Bummer was waiting for me when I realized that turning on and off the computer would have to be a screwdriver and shorting the contacts on the motherboard. But to launch it for a while was enough. I made sure that the fan noise is exactly the same as on netbooks and laptops with the same video card, i.e. He REALLY IS, but not much, he hoped to drown out the body.

We now turn to the buildings. To pick up the case for this toy turned out to be a very hard task. Viewed almost everything on ebay and in Ukraine. But I didn’t agree to pay the price from $ 120 to $ 300, especially for “the cat in the bag”, because there really is very little information about miniITX packages. One of the most "popular" of the discussed was the body CFI-A8989. The choice of many, and me, including the obvious - the price of $ 50 is still acceptable. The case turned out to be quite popular, and in our city it turned out to be in online stores. Order - delivery, 120 minutes and the body in my hands. Open, throw out of the case of the internal power supply to 150W (it still has nowhere to connect to the motherboard). Within 20 minutes, the assembly of all the iron in the body and everything is ready. Run and ... but this is in the next series, but for now let's stop on photos and some minuses of iron. I will not talk about pluses - this system is just a big plus by itself :).

Let's see what's under the lid. On the left, the motherboard was placed comfortably on four bolts, on the right a lot of empty space that was left after throwing out the 150W power supply unit.



View from above. On the left is a native fan, working on the withdrawal of the expected heat. Looking ahead, I’ll say - in my configuration (home web server, svn and rocking), no heat was detected. But the noise of this fan is quite obvious, which is very annoying. From above, you can see the location of the 3.5 ”hard drive, above it, any device of 5.25” is freely placed, for which I did not set it to be absolutely unnecessary.



This is an empty space on the right, below you can see the holes from the native power supply unit screwed to the bottom of the case, the lace dangles from behind.



What I didn’t expect, so it’s from the motherboard with a price of $ 230, a discrepancy between the wi-fi antenna and the power supply plug inserted into the connector. Two solutions - we stick with the help of brute force or cut a piece of plastic from the power supply or from a wi-fi antenna. So far, solution number 1 has been applied.



And another small minus of the motherboard. The manufacturer obviously saved on the back sockets ... since the pictures of the power supply and wi-fi are absent, instead of them are pictures of Line-In, Line-Out. The fact is just unpleasantly upset, rich equipment and such a mess of stuff. Not centered arrangement of parts, also left some unpleasant aftertaste. In general, the rear panel is a complete disappointment, a very unpleasant metal panel mud when removing the monitor cord. It happens again because the parts cling.



But all this stuff. The main thing is of course the noise. The result of the purchase of this toy was supposed to be - a silent home server. If you planned to buy and think that it will be so - forget, the noise with the case closed is still there. Therefore, it is proposed one of these days to try to glue over the parts of the body cover with automotive obesshumkoy. The result will add here in the updates. And if it does not work out, then I will leave the frame, and the rest will be made of wood, although we will do it anyway a bit later :).

In general - it turned out quite decent and most importantly inexpensive compact machine. The choice fell on her for several reasons:
- Compared with Intel’s motherboard, it was possible to get cheaper on the basis of the N230, but I didn’t see any reason to save $ 50-70 (Zotac IONITX low-end models), and then regret it;
- The case is inexpensive, available for purchase, even if it turned out to be “very” noisy, but our hands seem to grow normally, and we were born in the USSR, we will think of something, we have a frame - we rivet the rest. :)

But it was just the beginning ... in the second part I will tell you some moments of dealing with the BIOS and setting up drivers for ION. At the same time and leave it to Habré in the form of an article, when reinstalling.

PS: I apologize for the style of presentation, the writer of me is worthless :)
PS2: Thank you for corrections of errors :)

Update: Question for the habrasoobshchestvu: someone came across maybe, you need a 7-10 "LCD monitor to connect to this machine. I want to mod it completely and embed the screen there would still be a fairy tale. Ie the terminal and minignom would be brought to a small screen, and build the screen into the case.