BIOS:

We won't spend too much time looking at the BIOS on the ZMAXdp. There is nothing too exciting, and considering that it is 2+ years old, you may have seen many just like it already. The below left image shows the main page where the key features are identified, and you can see that this unit shipped with BIOS ZMDPV116 (the most recent). The below right image shows the "Advanced CPU Configuration" page, which shows that the test system has been setup with a pair of dual core AMD Opteron 270 processors (effectively four 2.0 GHz cores with 1MB L2 cache each.


The below left image is of the "Hardware Health Configuration" screen where you can view fan speeds, CPU temperatures, and power supply voltages. You can also adjust the "Smart Fan Temperature", which tells the two PSU fans when to kick it up to full speed. The below right screen is part of the "Northbridge Chipset Configuration" where you can adjust your memory settings and timings.


As I said, nothing too exciting in the BIOS, but it does have all the things you would want to see, minus any real overclocking features.


Installation and Operation:

The IWILL ZMAXdp Dual Opteron Small Form Factor Barebones System was assembled with the following components for this review:

» 2x AMD Opteron 270 Dual Core 2.0 GHz processors
» 2x 1024MB Corsair 3-3-3-8 ECC 400 MHz Registered DDR memory
» 2x 80 GB Seagate Barracuda 1.5 Mbps SATA hard drives
» 256 MB XFX Geforce 7600 GS AGP video card
» Buslink DVDRW optical drive
» In-Win 10-in-1 card reader
» Intersil 802.11b Mini-PCI wireless card
» Windows XP Professional

If you check the details on the Geeks.com website, or even the IWILL website, you may notice that some of the components chosen above have not been listed as compatible. The ZMAXdp is capable of more than the published specifications indicate, and I'd like to thank the excellent people of the 2CPU.com community for pointing out the true capabilities of the ZMAXdp.

The original plan was to use components from an older server (2x Opteron 246 single core processors, 2x 512MB DDR, and a Radeon 9600 video card), but learning of the greater potential and the chance to run with four cores convinced me to spend a little money for an upgrade.