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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.
in short
X yes but not with hardware acceleration
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 $150. I would also recommend Mini ITX. Cool service and quick delivery
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I hadn't heard about this form factor before, but a quick search on newegg.com shows that it's incredibly cheap! A VIA motherboard with a 1Ghz processor is only 170 something bucks!! Add 40-50$ for memory, 80$ for a decent sized hard drive, and 50-100$ for a case, and you have a complete and small computer. I'm thinking that you add a small lcd screen and a remote control (stick the IR receiver on the front of the case), and this is a perfect and incredibly cheap divx/mp3 player, connected to a TV and stereo system.
Maan
The review basically says they can't keep up for playing DVDs or streaming video. There goes my interest in them. At least, not without some hardware assist... I suppose one could try a video card that can offload the decoding. That's how the Tivo gets away with using such a low-end CPU, right?
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.
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.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
The real revolution will start when the MicroATX boards start coming in consumer devices, without the customer knowing it. So your next DVD player may have one of these inside, run Linux and be able to play Ogg, DivX, Quake, Freecell and Minesweeper.
to start with, I just put a little invertor in my car, under the front passenger seat. Good for charging laptops, and anything else which craves electric power. (I hate cig-lighter adapters, besides which I have too little incentive to bother replacing my current -- broken -- one.)
...
...) A small case, the smallest LCD I can find, a little hard drive ... Seems about all that's necessary.
The basic reasons I'd like a small, low-power computer in my car:
- recording web cam output. I have a currently unused webcam I'd like to point out the front window. Ideally, I'd like to have ones in all directions
- audio playback. Changing in-flight the discs of an 8-hour audiobook on CD is annoying. Choosing a playlist (of the same discs, converted to oggs) before starting to drive is much simpler.
- GPS display. Where am I, and why aren't I where I thought I was?
Those are the top 3; there are other reasons too (keep a wireless router there, and be able to multiplex connections when there's some truly ubiquitous wireless access to speak up; play games when stopped for whatever reason, have a microphone for recording oddball thoughts while driving; use it as an audio TiVO for recording Prairie Home Companion as I listen, etc).
The VIA boards look nice for this kind of application, both because they won't strain my invertor and because they're very small. (And the built-in ports simplify things
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
See http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/index.php for more details.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
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.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
When a motherboard with processor, video, nic, tv-out, usb and firewire that costs $150.00, you
can just buy another in three years.
Every time someone talks about mini-ITX lately, there's always the inevitable comment "don't plan on running Quake 3 on it" or some such nonsense.
:). Toss in even a 10gb hard drive and you can have thousands upon thousands of games available. Coupla USB controllers, built in TV-out.. *drool* Hell, add on the always mentioned mp3 player, and it's multifunctional.
:(
If I had the cash, I'd say one of these would make the *perfect* emulation console. You can get cases about the same size as the board, maybe 4-5 inches high (ie: smaller than an Xbox
Oh yeah, there's always that legality issue
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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.
c _f orm_factor.shtm has a review, but the site goes up and down. Use the google cache instead.
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/fi
[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?
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
For the record, you CAN get hardware acceleration under Linux with the built-in Trident chipset--it's not the normal trident.c driver in the kernel. Here's a link (no guarantees, it's Geocities):
http://www.geocities.com/jagasian/
I personally own five mini-itx systems, and I've purchased about another 20 for my firm. Up until this past month, we didn't have the space to install real rack servers, so I started buying Epia 800 boards and Cubid 2677R cases--they're tiny, low power, and not very noticable, and more than fast enough for a firewall, mail server, web server, what-have-you. And they look a lot sexier lying around the office.
We also use them for forensic work. Put an IDE controller in the PCI slot, and you can pack the entire machine, plus an LCD monitor, keyboard, and mouse, into a breifcase-sized Pelican case. Pack a few extra PCI cards (SCSI, FW, MFM/RLL controller) and you can access just about any hard drive ever made. Many's the time we've made our reputation by being on the scene in hours, fully prepared and able to do a drive acquisition, for a job that the competition needed two days to prepare for. Clients eat that shit up.
Basically, you haven't lived until you've had a really portable system with actual PCI slots. I have a laptop, but this is a whole 'nother ball game.
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.
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
Arguable on ALL points. The Mini-ITX Spec dictates that the mobo can't use more than like 25 watts. In many cases, a 50-70 watt PSU is MORE than enough. Laptops may use less, but you don't buy laptops because they use very little power (in most cases) you buy them because they're portable. This is NOT meant to be as portable as a laptop. Plus, a Mini-ITX system can be run COMPLETELY Fanless. Try doing that with most laptops of the same speed. Laptops aren't THAT much smaller for the price increase, and you can only get a laptop capable of doing video/audio for $150 if you enjoy compressing video to 50x50 at 10k/s (not really, but you get the point.) For $300, you can have a computer that will play all your music, and movies WITHOUT recompressing them, and have more space to store them, to boot.
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.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."