Zotac's latest mini-PCs support two-drive RAID

Scorpus

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zotac raid zbox mini pc

While mini-PCs are often a great choice for an every day desktop PC, their small form factor doesn't provide much room for large storage arrays. However, with Zotac's latest selection of Zbox R mini-PCs, users with large storage needs are specially catered for through the inclusion of RAID support.

Both the Zbox R1531 and Zbox R1323 have enough room inside their small chassis for two 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gbps storage drives, which can be configured in either RAID 0 or 1, depending on whether you want more space or more fault tolerance. The higher-end model, the R1531, also supports a third drive through an mSATA slot.

Aside from decent storage support, both Zboxes make fairly modest desktop PCs. The R1531 comes with a dual-core Intel 'Broadwell' Core i3-5010U clocked at 2.1 GHz, plus support for up to 16 GB of DDR3L-1600 memory. External I/O includes four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, dual Gigabit LAN, and two antenna ports for the included Wi-Fi 802.11ac chip.

The Zbox R1323 is mostly the same, though the Broadwell CPU has been swapped out in favor of an entry-level dual-core Intel 'Haswell' Celeron 2961Y CPU. It comes as a barebones-only unit, while the R1531 is also available in a 'Plus' package that includes 4 GB of RAM and a 64 GB mSATA drive pre-installed.

Zotac hasn't revealed pricing or availability for these new Zboxes at this stage.

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So 4TB of possible storage + mSATA boot drive? that's not bad at all considering the size. The inclusion of a COM port is a bit of a surprise to me. I'd say the processor choices are anemic, but considering the form factor it's a necessary evil to keep the plastic from melting. =p

Still, it would make a neat HTPC and even house it's own storage as well instead of relying on a network share.
 
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