Kaby Lake is the latest version of Intel's 14nm microarchitecture, and the last but one before we hopefully see 10nm processors appear. But for now, we have Kaby Lake, offering improved clock speeds over Skylake chips, better performance from faster clock speed changes during use, and an improved graphics core, which is clocked faster and supports 4K streaming.
It takes a while for new chips to make their way into products. Typically we get desktop processors first, and in that regard Kaby Lake impresses with a 7GHz overclock. But now Zotac is embracing them, and putting passively cooled Kaby Lake processors inside its tiny ZBOX Nano desktop PC range.
The Zotac ZBOX Nano sits inside a case measuring just 5.76-by-4.98 inches and only 2.36 inches deep. It makes for a great media streaming box to hide away, or can happily sit mounted on the back of a monitor.
Zotac added four Kaby Lake Nano PCs to its range, carrying the names CI547 Nano and CI527 Nano, with PLUS variants also available. The CI547 uses an Intel Core i5-7200U dual core processor clocked at 2.5GHz with Turbo boosting that to 3.1GHz on demand. The CI527 uses an Intel Core i3-7100U dual core processor clocked at 2.4GHz with no Turbo frequency available. In both cases, Intel HD Graphics 620 is used to allow for up to 4K resolution. Two DDR4 SODIMM slots allow for up to 32GB of RAM running at 2133MHz.
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The PLUS variants simply add 4GB of RAM, which seems rather pointless to me. If they increase that to 8GB then I'm sure the PLUS models would prove more popular when they launch.
Other features of note include an impressive five USB 3.0 ports and two USB 3.1 Type-C ports. There's also Display Port and HDMI, a 3-in-1 card reader, Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, and a VESA mounting kit included in the box. And don't forget, Microsoft only officially supports Kaby Lake for use with Windows 10.
Zotac originally announced these Kaby Lake Nano PCs at CES in January, but as FanlessTech noticed, only now have they made it on to the Zotac website suggesting pricing and availability will be confirmed very soon.