Via Epia PX motherboard spawns Pico-ITX SFF form-factor
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 26th 2007 4:42PM
posted Jan 26th 2007 4:42PM
Although it wasn't too awfully long ago that AMD unveiled what it hoped would become an accepted standard for small form factor PCs, it looks like Via is already trying to one-up DTX. The forthcoming Epia PX media-oriented motherboard will clock in at just 3.9- x 2.8-inches, which provides "half the surface area of its already-tiny 4.7- x 4.7-inch Nano-ITX" standard and looks utterly dwarfed beside the 6.7- x 6.7-inch mini-ITX. Via's boards have become commonplace in applications which can sacrifice raw horsepower for low-power requirements and cool operation, such as being housed in Mini-Box's VoomPC-2. Consequently, the the Epia PX will purportedly tout just a 1GHz C7 processor (at least initially), and there's speculation that some flavors might actually support HDTV resolutions and video-in, but most of the expansion will be done through pin headers. Via hasn't opened its mouth to divulge details surrounding price nor availability, but it's assumed that this wee motherboard will run folks between $250 and $350 whenever it finally lands.
Obligatory...
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
I haven't had the pleasure of working with the 12X12mm nano but some of the funnest times I've ever had working with computers was using the Mini form factor motherboards from Via. I lost count of how many things friends and I turned into computer cases. The original and still the best mini form factor.
time to upgrade my car pc setup :)
Whenever I see news like this it reminds me that http://mini-itx.com/ doesn't have RSS feeds; which is plain obnoxious.
first off, the via embedded chips are great. they're low powered, onboard crypto, and the only game in town.
but via seems to do as much as possible to dissuade their fledging embedded market. they announce products that are first not seen, then released, only to be completely unavailable for quarters on end. their chipsets are at least slowly catching up, but have been a notorious sore point. and then theres the rather significant price premium they attach to their products in single unit sales. i cant picture why a nano-itx could cost more than a core2duo+mobo. and core solos are finally getting competitive in power consumption. they just dont have any other embedded infrastructure surrounding them.
£179 for a 1GHz Nano-ITX and RAM doesn't seem so expensive:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=26
Call me when they release femto-ITX.
Via sells 1.5Ghz to 2Ghz C7s, comparable in performance to low-end Celerons.
Also, pricing should be below $200 for CPU+Mobo combo going by other C7 pricing that is already on the market. The 1Ghz C7+mobo can be found below $100 these days.
Jesus, Via, how small are you going to make these things?
And it'll still run CS 1.6 at 60fps (800x600)!
(I had a first-run nehemiah core 1.2ghz via board that had no problem doing this 2 years ago)
They told me size didn't matter :-[
That's pretty cool. It's too bad they're a tad on the expensive side, but it's not too bad for what it is. I can almost taste the mini-PC stuffed into a cookie tin...
Another good idea from via that will probably be bug-ridden, unsupported, unstable, and over-priced just like all of the other boards I've tried from them. They've got some great engineers and ideas, but just can't seem to ever come through with the total package for satisfaction.
Inspired by the drone-guy:
Guys, what is SFF form-factor? "Small Form Factor form-factor"?
:-)
"bug-ridden, unsupported, unstable..."
Depends probably on use. My little "server farm" has currently seven EPIAs of various kinds scattered around the globe (literally), and last time I took a part of the farm down due to relocation, the main firewall box had almost two years of uptime clocked. All running Linux (Ubuntu). It was about time to update the OS anyway !
I have had problems in the past with Fedora and the newest Ubuntu 6.10 does not seem to work out of the box (6.06 is fine), so they sure are somewhat "non-standard". Apart from these minor quibbles, I can only say that I'm a very happy Mini-ITX-format customer of EPIA.