Iwill is no stranger when it comes to the small form factor game. A while ago they released their XP4 and ZPC SFFs. The XP4?s made perfect little office machines due to their compact form and simplistic nature. The thing with the XP4s and ZPCs were they utilized Intel?s 845GV chipset; which lacked support for external AGP graphics cards. This steered users who were looking for a tower replacement away from Iwill solutions. This proved to be a problem for Iwill, as they were once known for producing products that was praised by the overclocking world.

It?s been a while since the last ZPC and XP4s were launched, but Iwill is back in the game with a brand new small form factor system with all the bells and whistles. The new SFF is dubbed ZMAX and features a totally new design. According to Iwill, all their SFFs will be consistently named with a Z prefix.

A closer look?

The unit we will be looking at today is Iwill?s P4 model with integrated wireless AP functionality; the ZMAX-AP.

The new ZMAX is painted white with chrome trim and looks quite sexy. The Optical drive slot is covered by a front flap that does an excellent job concealing beige drives but proves to be a problem for slot load drives. Dimension wise, the ZMAX is approximately half an inch taller and wider than a Shuttle XPC. The depth is comparable.

Powering the ZMAX is Intel?s 865G dual channel DDR chipset.

Like an old 50?s Cadillac, the ZMAX has a fin towards the rear of the SFF. The fin serves a non-aesthetic purpose and is actually the WiFi antenna for the unit?s AP and Wireless capabilities.

Hidden below the optical drive flap is a USB 2.0 card reader that supports Compact Flash, Smart Media, SD/MMC, and memory stick. Unfortunately, there?s no support for XD cards, which is a format Olympus and Fuji are touting. For those who have no use for an internal card reader, the reader is removable and can be replaced with a floppy drive. Below the card reader are USB 2.0 and 1394a ports. Absent from the front panel are microphone and headphone jacks, which can be considered a negative by some users but praised by others.

When the ZMAX is powered up, the system has a blue glow that is very bright. When a peripheral is plugged into one of the front ports, the blue light changes to a red and stays red till the device is unplugged. Unlike the other SFFs, the Iwill only has blue and red LED?s, which looks great compared to say Shuttle, which still uses orange LED?s for hard drive activity.

On the backside of the ZMAX, Iwill has opted to use a customized micro ATX power supply with a few slight modifications to make it slide out.

The ZMAX features a relatively standard layout that features PS2, Serial, VGA, dual Ethernet, 4 USB, and audio connectors. In addition to the standard connectors, the ZMAX features an eSATA connector above the Ethernet jacks for external SATA devices. Absent from the back of the ZMAX is any type of digital coaxial/optical in/out connectors; which leads us to believe Iwill isn?t targeting the ZMAX for HTPC usage.

An even closer look...BIOS, and Test Setup

An even closer look...

The drive cage consists of two pieces, the card reader and optical drive cage and the separate hard drive cage. The hard drive cage can house two 3.5? drives in certain circumstances, which we?ll expand on later.

Iwill has chosen to use a dual heat pipe heatsink design. The dual heat pipes are U-shaped and connected to a bunch of not too thin fins and do a decent job dissipating heat. Compared to the Shuttle units, the Iwill heat pipe is a lot beefier and features larger fins and more surface area for heat dissipation.

While the drive cage supports two hard drives that is not the case if a full size AGP card is installed. When an AGP card is installed, the drive cage has issues closing down and won?t close unless there is only one hard drive installed. This shouldn?t be a problem with smaller cards.

After a while of maneuvering everything in place, we were finally able to get everything in place. In our test system, we opted to install a BFG FX5950. It fits fine but took a few minutes to maneuver into place.

On the opposite side, the hard drives fit snuggly. If an SATA drive were to be used, an angled SATA cable is needed, as standard SATA cables extend out too far and prevent the cover to be installed. Nonetheless, Iwill includes the required SATA cables and power adaptors in the box.

Turning the ZMAX over reveals a cover that hides the wLAN mini PCI adaptor; this is an excellent solution compared to USB wLAN adaptors.

Powering the WiFi function of the ZMAX is an Inprocomm IP2120 that supports 802.11b and provides AP functionality. In testing, I had issues getting the WiFi to connect to my Belkin wireless router. Nonetheless, the mini PCI nature of the WiFi allows it to be easily upgraded with other mini PCI cards.

Installation notes

The ZMAX wasn?t too hard to work on, except the cover was a pain to reinstall. Removing it was easy but it took a bit more effort to get back on. This, coupled with the hard drive cage makes the ZMAX a bit harder to work on than comparable Shuttle?s. Nonetheless, once you get used to it, it?s relatively easy.

BIOS

Like everything else in the world, the ZMAX utilizes an Award BIOS.

Under the PC Health options, Iwill allows you to adjust the system fan speed and temperature tolerance levels. As for system fan speed, you can set the fan to 25, 50, 75, and 100%. Since we used a Prescott, the fan had to be set to 100%. As for the temperature threshold, you can set it between 40 and 60C.

For the overclocker at heart, Iwill allows users to set the FSB from 200 to 400 MHz, lock the AGP/PCI/SRC Clock, and adjust the FSB/Memory Ratio, AGP, and DDR voltages. There?s also a feature Iwill calls Turbojet, which is most likely nothing more than Intel?s own ?PAT.?  Lacking is any kind of CPU VCORE adjustments, which might steer the overclocking crowd away from the ZMAX. 

Test Setup

Intel Pentium 4 2.8E,

Iwill ZMAX-AP,
Abit IC7 MAX3,

2x 512MB Kingston HyperX 4300,
BFG Tech FX5950 Ultra,
Maxtor Diamond Max 9 7200RPM 8MB Cache,
MSI 16x DVD-Rom,

< previous - (2 of 5) - next >

---

• A closer look cont... (1 of 5)
• An even closer look...BIOS, and Test Setup (2 of 5)
• Overclocking & Benchmarks (3 of 5)
• Benchmark Comparisons, Noise, and Temps (4 of 5)
• Conclusion (5 of 5)