Zotac ZBox IQ01 Plus review

The Zotac ZBoz IQ01 Plus may look like a wireless router, but there’s some serious power hidden in its plastic case. We’ve reviewed the Plus version here, which comes with 4GB RAM fitted and a 500GB hard disk, but you can also buy a barebones model (without the Plus suffix) for £463 inc VAT from www.lambda-tek.com, and fit your own RAM and 2.5in hard disk. 4GB of Crucial SODIMM RAM will cost you £30 inc VAT from the same site, and a 2.5in HGST 500GB hard disk is £35 inc VAT. This brings the total cost of the system up to £528 if you build it yourself, which is comparable to the price of the complete system.

You’ll also have to add an operating system, so if you want to go with Windows 8.1, you’ll need to budget a further £67 for the DVD OEM version of Windows 8.1 64-bit. As the IQ01 has no DVD drive, you’ll also have to use the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool from http://tinyurl.com/windowsusbtool to transfer the contents of the DVD to a 4GB flash drive.

The IQ01 is very easy to customise. All you need to do to open the chassis is undo two small thumb screws on the base of the PC and slide the side away with the handy thumb grip. Inside, there are two slots for up to 16GB of DDR3 laptop memory, a 2.5in hard disk bay, a mini PCI Express slot and a half-height mini PCI Express slot. The half-height mini PCI Express slot is filled with an 802.11ac wireless adaptor, which also has built-in Bluetooth.

Round the back, the IQ01 has a rather odd selection of ports. Instead of the usual VGA and HDMI video outputs, there are two DisplayPorts and a single-link DVI port, but thankfully Zotac has included DVI-to-VGA and DVI-to-HDMI adaptors in the box to make it easier to connect to your TV or monitor. The single-link DVI port could be a problem, as this means you won’t be able to use it with a screen with a resolution higher than 1,920×1,200, but you could always use a DisplayPort monitor instead.

There are also two USB3 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and an S/PDIF optical audio output on the rear of the chassis, along with two more USB3 ports on the front and side of the PC, a multi-format card reader, an IR receiver and separate headphone and microphone jacks, so you’re definitely covered for connections.