Tom's Hardware Reviews VIA Mini-ITX Board

SlightlyMadman writes "Tom's Hardware has finally taken notice of the popular Mini ITX form factor, in this article. Sounds like these are the way to go for a new PC, so long as you don't have a deathmatch scheduled anytime soon." While the form factor on these boards are great, one gives up a lot in the way of ability to upgrade, since many parts are now soldered onto the motherboard.

Comments

state of linux support on mini-itx m series

[xtra]

if you want to know the current linux support on the mini-itx m series try this url : http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=2 8&threadid=33324

in short
X yes but not with hardware acceleration

Re:state of linux support on mini-itx m series

[gmp]

I built one this week -- EPIA 5000, Cubid 2688R, IBM 180GXP. Linux support is fine under 2.4.20, and I have not seen the network problems people are reporting with the stock via-rhine.c (but if you do, via ships an open-source driver with the system). X is slow but works fine. I built the box for a network server and audio component -- its great for that purpose. Sound works great under Alsa (but google "Eden PciRetry" if you plan on running X). Cheers, Greg

Small form factor users

[rf0]

The nice thing about small form factor is that there are really quiet and can go into the louge. For example I have one which I use to stream MP3's from my main PC (via WiFI) into my Hifi. Also if you are like most geeks and have lying around you can make a new PC for about $150. I would also recommend Mini ITX. Cool service and quick delivery

Rus

Re:Small form factor users

[fihzy]

Umm not really. You can get a small form factor case for the mini itx with an external power brick. Only about $70 for the case & psu. No fans :-)

Good firewall

[markclong]

I own one of the 800 MHz Mini-ITX boards. With a Compact Flash card as a hard drive, a little bit of RAM and a reduced FreeBSD operating system you can have a good firewall, DHCP server, DNS server or anything you want. They are very quite and can be placed in a drawer or small cabinet. I have tried Windows XP and it can play mp3s and movies fairly well. The newer versions are better for multimedia.

Re:Incredibly cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've built a couple of these. Great info and project ideas at www.mini-itx.com (creative name, eh?) and SPCR keeps up with much of this hardware.
I'm using a passive cooling model, a seagate barracuda, and a case with an fanless external power supply (blister pack) for my entertainment server, less than whisper, almost silent. Great server for an audiotron.

There is a more cost effective alternative...

[vwpau227]

I've been doing a bit of development (for one of my clients) using the Mini Micro ATX Mainboard-based systems from Elitegroup (ECS). The mainboard that I've been using is the EVEm mainboard in the ECS IN22 system (the "U-Buddie" system as they call it).

The system that I have been using features a C3 processor at 733Mhz (the "1GigaPro" as they call it) and it has the VIA PLE133 chipset and it works great... I have had no stability or reliability issues so far, and we have purchased 10 of them over the past month or so.

The best news is that the system, which comes as a package in a sleek black and silver case, is cheap. Very cheap. The whole system with mainboard, case, power supply, 10 GB notebook hard disk drive, 24X CD-ROM, 56K modem riser, on-board 10/100 NIC and 128MB RAM is only about USD $199. Compared with the Mini ITX equiped systems, there is a nearly 33% savings for the exact same specifications. They both even use the same PLE133 chipset that is mentioned in the Tom's Hardware article for the EPIA C3 mainboard.

Slashdot users may also be please to note that the system comes pre-loaded with a Linux distribution called ThizLinux that is quite user-friendly and easy to configure.

Mini-ITX systems are great, but I think the Mini Micro ATX systems, like the ones based on the EVEm from ECS are a better value, giving nearly identical performance at a lower price.

Re:Crap

[xtra]

i just bought a m1000 and i can say that if you use a dvd player with hardware acceleration support (no linux support yet) than it can keep up (about 30 to 40% cpu usage)

EPIA-M Eden 600MHz & Linux

[luzrek]

I'm using an EPIA-M with a 600 Mhz Eden processor. It seems to be fast tenough encoding and decoding stuff. However, the EPIA-M doesn't seem to be that well supported on Linux. I suggest using the ALSA drivers instead of the Open Source Sound drivers or those that come with either Mandrake 9.1 or Redhat 8.0. The embeded video card works fine with the standard EPIA drivers, but the direct mpeg2 doesn't work. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but there are problems.

FIC CR51 Falcon

[certron]

There is a unit that I've been looking at made by FIC, which they have named CR51 "Falcon" which uses the 17cm x 17cm mini-itx board from Via and comes with a 933mhz processor. Newegg has it, for $150, which includes case, power supply, motherboard, cpu, and heatsink/fan. What interested me about this is that apparently by adding only RAM and an optical drive, there is a firmware included ("RaptureWare") that boots in 4-5 seconds to play mp3s, DVDs, VCDs and audio CDs. Add hard drive and you have a full computer.

I didn't buy it, mostly because I would be buying it for someone else, but also I looked at the floating point performance and decided that it wasn't that great for a general-purpose desktop for them.

http://www.ownt.com/technews/2003/fic_falcon/fic _f orm_factor.shtm has a review, but the site goes up and down. Use the google cache instead.

[a good half hour of google searching later...]

It's really hard to find reviews of this thing. Dammit.

When their site comes back up, I'll post a thread from my LUG about the boards. The best idea that I have is to buy the FIC CR51 Falcon and put a wireless card in it and put MeshAP on it, or take a few of the mini-itx boards, hook them up to be powered from car batteries, add wireless and have a mobile wireless network. Would be kinda cool, no?

Binary-only Linux "support"

[friartux]

I own a VIA EPIA-M9000, and I can't say that Linux is really supported worth beans.

I tried installing Mandrake (sorry, I don't remember which pre-release, but it was recent); SuSE 8.1 from DVD; and Red Hat (Phoebe 8.0.93 prerelease). The only one that had any luck was Phoebe. Mandrake wouldn't install due to crashes; SuSE wouldn't install from DVD -- some form of IDE-DVD data corruption. Got it to install using CD's, but got some random crashes later.

The M9000 uses the CLE266 chipset, which has a new video part. In all 3 distros, you're stuck with the VESA driver -- which meant no acceleration and a far-from-lovely 60Hz refresh rate.

Why did I use cutting-edge distros? Because the board has very 'new' hardware -- firewire ports, USB2, CLE266, audio, etc. The IDE, audio, and various ports worked fine with Phoebe, right down to the Epson C82 inkjet I connected via USB. But the VESA video is just plain awful.

VIA offers binary-only video drivers for older distributions, and has been promising (but not delivering) source for ages -- but only for 2D video functions. They've cited "legal issues" on any support for the hardware MPEG decoder and 3D.

(Pay attention: useful links coming up :-)

The drivers they've released thus far have been for older distributions, mainstream only. Just try Gentoo or something. There are many frustrated users out there right now.

For the curious, here's what I'm using: EPIA-M9000 ($150) in a $28 generic mini-ATX (not ITX) case w/250W power supply; 512MB PC2100 RAM; 120GB Maxtor hard drive; LG combo DVD-ROM/CD-R (16X DVD, 32x10x40x CDR); Intel eepro100 ethernet; external modem and other peripherals. Yes, it currently does firewalling amongst its other duties.

Bottom line: consider this some bleeding-edge, undersupported hardware and proceed accordingly.

Re:Incredibly cheap! ($49 is the real price)

[jbridges]

NOT $170!! That's not cheap!

PC-Chips M787CL+ V3.0 Socket 370/667M CPU/SIS/A&V&L&M/MATX/Bulk Motherboard for $49

$49!!! Now that's cheap! I've done several systems, you can replace the fan/heatsink with a Zalman northbridge heatsink, then run it with only the power supply fan. The only noise audible is the harddrive whine.

CPU: SOCKET 370, BUILT IN VIA C3 1GIGA PRO CPU ON BOARD (CYRIX 734MHZ)
CHIPSET: SIS630S (FSB133)
MEMORY: 2 DIMMS FOR PC133 SDRAM UP TO 1G
SLOTS: 3PCI, 1AMR
AUDIO: AC'97 ON BOARD
VIDEO: INTEGRATED ADVANCED 128BIT 2D/3D GRAPHIC ENGINE
LAN: INTEGRATED IN SIS 630E (ON BOARD)
MODEM: 1AMR CARD
MICRO ATX, BULK

My Mini-ITX is da bomb

[jht]

In my house, we have "real" systems in just about every room (two Macs, a P4, a couple of Athlons, and assorted other stuff), but I use a Mini-ITX system as the server to run it all. I'm using the Eden-533 processor in a Cubid case, with an external DC power supply, no floppy, and a laptop hard drive. It runs fanless, and the only thing you ever hear from it is the occasional chirp out of the hard drive.

I run e-Smith Linux on it, which is based loosely on Redhat, but tuned specifically to be a SOHO server. No video issues because it only uses text mode - I do all the admin either from the console or through the web interface. It makes a powerful little server.

My old home server was a Flex ATX system that was almost as small (one of the old "Book PC's"), but it had the loud fan on the built-in PS, plus a CPU fan for the Celery 366 I ran in it. And from an airflow perspective, it was all cramped up inside. It was slower, hotter, and louder than the ITX, even though the form factor was almost identical.

As I mentioned above, I have plenty of computers that are more powerful, but the speed is fine for most routine purposes. I'll always keep a high-octane PC around for gaming and such, and I still use Macs a decent amount, but I suspect I'll buy more Mini-ITX systems down the road for the computers that'll just handle the basics. They're smaller, use less juice, and you don't realize how great silent operation is until you have it.