Do the Zotac Z68 MITX MBs Exist?

[bodger]

I have been waiting to look at the new Zotac MBs (or any Z68 MITX MBs for that matter) before making up my mind on a new build but, despite announcements and supposed reviews, they don't seem to actually exist on a seller's shelves anywhere. Do these boards exist or are they some sort of delusion induced by mass hysteria in the computer blogging press?

[daboggeyman]

 From what I have read they were due to be released in July but no date in July  and sold mainly in the UK

[crosscourt]

They were at Computex 2011 and Anandtech did some early reviews of them.

[bodger]

Yes, I know that they were shown -- that is how I know about them. I've been waiting for an mITX MB since the first rumors of an upcoming Z68 chipset from Intel. It has been a very long wait. I contacted Zotac just a few days ago and got back a reply again repeating the 'mid July' date. Oh, and despite there being indications that they were on sale at UK retailers it appears to be false. Appears to be some sort of website screwup which merely listed UK retailers which sell at least one product from Zotac -- none of them had a clue about the Z68 MBs.

[tino]

I've never heard of the following place before, but they seem to claim to have them.

http://rebelgadgets.com/product/733/zotac-z68-itx-wifi-supreme-intel-1155-ddr3-mini-itx-motherboard.html

[bodger]

I've never heard of the following place before, but they seem to claim to have them.

http://rebelgadgets.com/product/733/zotac-z68-itx-wifi-supreme-intel-1155-ddr3-mini-itx-motherboard.html

That's a "pre order" item. Besides, if I can avoid dealing with $ -> £ conversions and the extra shipping I'd be ahead of the game (at least a bit). The guy in US Zotac sales said that the boards should be available at "Newegg.com and other online retailers by next week" I guess I'll just wait and see. It isn't as if I haven't been waiting for months already. Besides, I got a speeding ticket (damned speed traps!) in my MX-5 and that cost me a bit out of the build-a-new-computer funds (about half an i7-2600k CPU by my estimate).

[crosscourt]

Ill check over at Anandtech and see if anyone knows something about this.

[daboggeyman]

 Refer to OD s post here for more : http://www.sudhian.com/forums/index.php/topic,108603.0.html

[bodger]

FWIW, the Z68ITX-A-E motherboard is finally available in the USA at Newegg -- I just bit the bullet and ordered. By available I mean actually available for sale, not 'place the order and if we ever get some we'll let you know' act that several other suppliers seem to be doing. A very limited number of the boards (10 for the entire country?) had been available from a Canadian supplier but their US website denied their existence. Since my budget has been seriously nackered by some remodeling projects it will probably take me two months to get all the bits and pieces together to actually build the thing. It should be interesting though since it is my first SFF system that isn't a Shuttle.

BTW, I had been planning on putting in a BR burner but since the Sugo06 case only has space for a compact optical drive this is going to be a bitch. Does anyone know of a decent drive that doesn't cost a fortune? The one I have penciled in on the build list is an 'LG BT10N 6X SATA Internal Slim Blu-ray Disc ReWriter' but it costs over $160 and that makes me cringe.

FOLLOWUP: I got most of the stuff, the critical stuff anyway, and decided to do a test build knowing that I'd have to re-do everything. I got into some really puzzling stuff, the worst being a bug in Intel's HD Graphics 3000 drivers. Since I didn't have the final video card yet I decided to play with it using the internal video which drives two HDMI and one mini Displayport. It turns out that everything works sorta OK with the generic VGA mode until you install the Intel drivers then it gets in a state where the boot progresses normally until the welcome screen should appear but all I got was a black screen. Still no resolution on that. Second problem was the 'cache SSD' provision in the Z68 chipset. There are ample chances to screw up there but the key is to set the BIOS for RAID (even though there is no RAID) and then install the OS onto the big spinning drive then install the Intel 'Rapid' software and control console, and then turn on the 'accelerate'. Then DO NOT DO ANYTHING RASH -- JUST WAIT until the system thinks for a while even though it looks dead. If you do anything it will blow the entire install and you need to start from scratch. Once it is working though the speed can be breathtaking. I ran through a MSE full scan on the system to get as many files as possible cached and then ran another. The first ran as normal (read that as pretty slow) but the second ran in literally a few minutes. Since I put in an 60gB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD I can cache quite a few files. Boots are super quick BTW.

I should be getting the Zotac Nvidia graphics card, 3tB spinny disk, and the final OS (I'm running a bootleg copy of the W7 Ultimate that is on my previous build for testing now) on Monday so by Tuesday some real testing can start. I know that the i7-2600K runs really hot in that tiny box with the stock heatsink so something will need to be done there but there is very little leeway to put in a good one because the graphics card and the tall memory coolers will limit me to about 100 X 100 X 80 (mm) of heatsink and fan. That may be the real challenge in the end.