Zotac has been making small form-factor PCs for years, with the company’s ZBOX line of mini PCs pre-dating Intel’s NUC line of tiny desktop computers. But for the most part Zotac has focused on the consumer or business space, with mini PCs that you could use as small, quiet desktop computers, gaming systems, video players, or digital signage systems.

Now Zotac is launching a new line of mini computers aimed squarely at the industrial and consumer spaces. The Zotac ZBOX Pro line of embedded computers are designed to power things like medical equipment, industrial robots, casino game systems, IoT gateways, and ATMs.

Zotac plans to showcase some of the first ZBOX Pro systems at the Integrated Systems Europe 2019 show this week.

Honestly, these are the sorts of little computers I don’t typically pay that much attention to because they aren’t really designed for home use. But there’s a big market for embedded computers and there are a bunch of other companies competing in this space, including Advantech, AAEON, Axiomtek… and those are just some of the companies whose name start with the letter A.

But Zotac’s entry into the embedded space is interesting because the company is basically launching commercial versions of its existing consumer product lineup.

That means you still have computers with a small physical footprint and a range of models including tiny, fanless, and energy-efficient solutions that can power digital signage systems and larger, more power-hungry models that offer workstation-class performance.

What’s new is cases that are meant to be more durable, additional mounting options, and longer support… plus I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices were higher. It’s also interesting to note that Zotac highlights Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux support for all of its new Pro series embedded computers (you can certainly run Linux on the company’s consumer devices, but it’s not typically mentioned on the product pages for those models.

Here are some of the first embedded systems Zotac plans to offer:

ZBOX Pro CI329 nano – 6.3″ x 5″ x 2.3″ fanless PC with Intel Celeron N4100

ZBOX Pro CI330 nano – 6.3″ x 5″ x 2″ fanless PC with Intel Celeron N3160

ZBOX Pro PI335 pico – 4.5″ x 3″ x 1.1″ fanless PC with Intel Celeron N4100

ZBOX Pro QKP1000 – 8.3″ x 7″ x 1.8″ PC with Intel Core i5-7300U + NVIDIA Quadro P1000

ZBOX Pro QK7P3000 – 8.98″ x 8″ a 2.5″ PC with Intel Core i7-7700T + NVIDIA Quadro P3000

press release

 

 

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

3 replies on “Zotac unveils ZBOX Pro line of mini PCs commercial and industrial applications”

  1. Always looking for small fanless machines at reasonable prices. Unfortunately, they don’t mention what the Ethernet chips are, which means they are probably using Realtek. I’ve had so many problems with Realtek chips that it’s a deal killer for me.

  2. Historically, Zotac’s cooling solutions have been a joke. Their thermals are always *considerably* worse than the competition, and their fanless boxes run hot enough to make you seriously worry about how long it will take the machine to die. (Even the Liliputing ZBOX CI660 review from ~4 months ago had stupid high temps on their ‘redesigned’ cooling solutions.)

    That said, several of these industrial cases look impressive. I’m not holding my breath (because this is Zotac), but it could turn out that the thermals on those boxes end up being as good as they look. If that happens, these are probably the best machines you could get from Zotac as a *consumer*, and not just industry.

    We’ve been waiting YEARS for Zotac to release fanless computers whose thermals aren’t a complete joke. I’m interested in seeing if this is the product line that finally achieves it.

    1. Very well said, I couldn’t agree more.

      Would love to see these new boxes widely available.

Comments are closed.