Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel Z68 chipset is a single-chip solution and is also known as PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 5 and 10). This motherboard, however, provides only two of the four SATA-300 ports supported by the chipset. As already explained, the mini PCI Express slots is mSATA-compatible, and you can replace the Wi-Fi adapter with an mSATA SSD unit.

Unfortunately there is no marking on the motherboard saying which ports are the SATA-600 and which are the SATA-300. Usually, SATA-600 ports are white, but the manufacturer decided to use blue connectors. The information about which ports are which is hidden on page 19 of the product manual, and we believe most users won’t find it.

Figure 5: SATA-300 ports (red) and SATA-600 ports (blue)

There is no support for a floppy disk drive controller or an ATA-133 port.

This motherboard has eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. It also has four USB 3.0 ports, two available on the motherboard rear panel and two available through a front panel connector, controlled by a VLI VL800 chip. The motherboard comes with an I/O bracket for you to install these two ports on an available expansion slot from your case.

This motherboard doesn’t have FireWire ports.

The Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi supports 7.1+2 audio format, i.e., eight channels plus two independent channels for audio streaming. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC892 codec. The specifications of this chip include 97 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, and 24-bit resolution. These specifications are good for the mainstream user, but if you are looking into working professionally with audio editing, you should look for a motherboard that provides an SNR of at least 97 dB for the analog input.

The portrayed motherboard comes with shared analog audio outputs, meaning that you won’t need to use the line in or mic in jacks when connecting a 5.1 analog speaker set, but one of these jacks must be used if you install a 7.1 analog speaker set.

The motherboard has an on-board optical SPDIF output, and you also can add a coaxial SPDIF output using the available “SPDIF” header.

This motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, controlled by two Realtek RTL8111E chips. The Wi-Fi adapter that comes with the motherboard is an A
zureWave AR5B95, compatible with the IEEE 801.11b/g/n standards.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with four USB 2.0 ports, Wi-Fi antenna connectors, clear CMOS button, shared keyboard and mouse PS/2 connector, two USB 3.0 ports (blue connectors), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two HDMI connectors, one mini DisplayPort connector, optical SPDIF output, and shared analog 7.1 audio outputs.

The motherboard comes with an adapter for you to convert the mini DisplayPort output into a regular DisplayPort connector.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel