VIA's new EPIA PX5000EG 500MHz Pico-ITX board loses the fan

Despite the shortcomings, it's hard not to get excited about VIA's Pico-ITX offerings: who cares if the capabilities are limited, they're just so adorably small we want to pinch their cheeks. Now VIA is making things even more efficient with a 500MHz board that can be cooled solely with the heatsink -- no fan required. Naturally, that step down in processor speed from the PX10000 won't exactly be much help to the folks sticking Ubuntu on these things, but the PX5000EG should be a boon to the embedded market and reliability nuts. Video is after the break.

[The Apple @ May 14th 2008 9:53AM]

How Long Everyone?
(Watch the Video)

[w00t @ May 14th 2008 10:11AM]

I dunno, is it going to be under load?

5-10 minutes? :)

[Ray-- @ May 14th 2008 10:56AM]

We will video the VIA EPIA PX5000EG running Ubuntu 8.04 Linux, playing an Mpeg-4 video, naked, so to speak. How long will it last?! The maximum length of this competition test will be two weeks. At that stage we'll we'll take a hair dryer to it, turn the heating up in the room, anything to make it crash! That's if it lasts that long in the first place. The video of the testing will be released as our way of making the announcement of the winning guess. We'll speed it up and have the video available for you to watch at the end of the competition. Note that if it crashes on day one, we're not going to tell you. We will only reveal the video footage and the time of the crash on Monday 2 June 2008.

[duncan.macleod @ May 14th 2008 9:54AM]

This would be awesome for mod projects, such as a mini-linux distro that boots into a nintendo emulator for say... mounting inside a classic nintendo shell.

[MadMike @ May 14th 2008 10:01AM]

What's with the obscene love for PATA & VGA. Really?

It's 2008. All VGA & PATA products should be killed dead and buried 6-feet under volcanic rock to never rise again.

[sntc06 @ May 14th 2008 10:06AM]

There's a SATA connector at the side of the board.

[j_g_puff @ May 14th 2008 10:07AM]

What do you propose as an alternative?

[Sean S @ May 14th 2008 11:05AM]

If you want to talk about obsolesce, why stop there? USB made its debut over a decade ago, why not just throw out all the perfectly working technology for a new standard?

Or how about the stereo jack? It was first seen in the 19th century. Surely that would be a good target for removal in modern day hardware?

[SimonRichards @ May 14th 2008 10:13AM]

It has a SATA connector on the board, and you can get DVI through the headers on the board.

[MadMike @ May 14th 2008 10:22AM]

I know it has SATA, but what is with the death grip on the VGA and the PATA? It's not the point that I could get DVI and SATA. People are too worried about legacy support.

[w00t @ May 14th 2008 10:28AM]

People are scared of change!

Hell some computers still come with a 1.44mb floppy drive like my 20 year old amstrad 286 did :)

[Superevil @ May 14th 2008 10:38AM]

Don't forget those damn PS/2 ports. All peripherals should be USB from now on.

[Joe_Templeman @ May 14th 2008 10:59AM]

You need IDE so that it supports IDE-CF adapter for a very cheap, low heat SSD

VGA is probably because your not going to be running an amazing monitor off it anyway, so DVI would be kinda pointless...

[Shane @ May 14th 2008 12:08PM]

RS-232, PATA and VGA all still serve very valid purposes in today's world. Many embedded applications are likely going to talk using legacy interfaces that have been time tested to be reliable.

I'm not saying that DVI, USB and SATA aren't reliable, but industrial embedded systems take a long time to adopt changes until they are proven to be bulletproof.

This motherboard would be great for embedded applications!

[granny down east @ May 14th 2008 12:16PM]

@Mike: Legacy support is good, esp. if there are $1000s invested in scientific, navigational, or musical equip't that is in perfectly good working order.
Not every individual or agency has big bux to drop on the latest gadget. Ref. Creative audio card drivers, are you listening, Creative??

[rock99rock @ May 14th 2008 12:43PM]

That particular ide port also provies power to the hard drive. The connector for it allows for minimal useage of space. The sata connection would not allow this type of connection.

As for the VGA, cheaper displays (as well as touchscreens for carputers and other integrated devices) have no need for the bandwidth and resolutions supported by DVI.

Why dont you reseach before making judgements? It's like me calling you a pirate because of your avatar. What a silly assumption! (or IS it..)

[RichardBronosky @ May 14th 2008 1:48PM]

[quote=Joe_Templeman]DVI would be kinda pointless[/quote]

DVI is anything but pointless. Get educated. http://www.bronosky.com/?p=54

VGA is pointless because it is a digitally produced video signal ran through a D>A converter and stripped of it's digital component.
DVI-I is relevant because it is a digitally produced video signal ran through a D>A converter and output with both the digital and analog compositions in tact so that virtually and monitor can display it when the correct cable is used.

If this board had a DVI port on it, you could velcro it to the back of your TV (open air, no case) and turn it into a web portal so you could do your simple web tasks from the couch.

DVI-I can be easily converted to VGA, HDMI, even Component and Composite video. VGA is good for... anything with a VGA port.

[morcheeba @ May 14th 2008 1:59PM]

I heard this thing runs on DC current. Edison lost that battle a long time ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents ... can't we make it run on AC? ;-)

[MadMike @ May 14th 2008 2:17PM]

rock99rock:
But I am a Pirate. I use ad blockers for the web, I skip commercials with my DVR, I download TV shows with Miro and stream them to my PS3 with a computer running TVersity. I return junk snail mail to senders saying I'm dead. Hell, I even told a cop my wife was pregnant to get out of a speeding ticket. I'm an asshole - I am fine with it. I am also a dirty, opinionated, hypocrite. I am also always angry and I'm borderline psychotic.

Also I've built a carputer using a Mac Mini and used the DVI port. Yes pata includes power, but sata is faster and I only use 7200rpm drives. And before you say, "oh well a 7200rpm drive won't max out the PATA bus" PATA doesn't include NCQ. Does it make a big difference. Maybe not, but It's a cool buzzword to have on the project.

[RichardBronosky @ May 14th 2008 2:59PM]

[quote=rock99rock]As for the VGA, cheaper displays (as well as touchscreens for carputers and other integrated devices) have no need for the bandwidth and resolutions supported by DVI.

Why dont you reseach before making judgements?[/quote]

@rock99rock, You need to do research http://www.bronosky.com/?p=54

Because it is digital, DVI is lower bandwidth than the analog VGA equivalent resolution and less susceptible to RF interference. This makes it better suited for touch screens in car-puters and high noise industrial installations.

I'm not claiming that DVI or HDMI have error correction like networking protocols do (I have done my research http://www.ramelectronics.net/dvi/c10000-c11400-p1.html and http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/dvihdmicomponent.htm double checked) but I am saying that DVI-I is superior to VGA because it includes it as an option.

[rock99rock @ May 14th 2008 3:02PM]

(I secretly knew you were a pirate, i was just covering for you)

I havent tried TVersity... is it better than using the XBMC for pc? I do all the things you do. Thanks for the heads up about Miro, looks top notch.

The only point of my rebuddle, was that the mobo is not designed for higher end peripherals. (1ghz cpu, 1gb max ram no high density allowed). Its cool. Its small. Its slower than me in a marathon (slow). My dad is trying to install it in his car ( 1ghz fanned edition), and I laugh as my paultry 1.2ghz celeron runs laps around his setup. Damn thing cant run winamp visuals past 5fps at 320x240 windowed mode :) I just dont think the mobo would benefit from the faster addons.

[MadMike @ May 14th 2008 3:20PM]

TVersity is great. I had an lenovo x61 ultra-portable converting and streaming video to 720p to my PS3. without breaking a sweat.

[Ross @ May 14th 2008 4:12PM]

I think the point is that IDE is meant for a solid state drive or a flash adapter. DVI is kind of overkill because the video may not support a resolution of more than 1024x768. Many monitors that have 1024x768 as their max resolution are only VGA and don't have DVI ports. So if nothing else, they're using VGA for compatibility.

[Brad @ May 14th 2008 4:15PM]

All those bitching about DVI/SATA

1) It has SATA. Just not from the picture, RTFA
2) It has DVI, just in pin-header form.
3) I've yet to see 7" LCDs start coming with DVI connectors on them.

You are actively engaged in one of the absolute lamest online debates I've ever come across: VGA vs DVI on an embedded, nano-itx platform. IT HAS BOTH.

Christ.

[Chad @ May 14th 2008 10:07AM]

just imagine a Beowu....oh wait....wrong forum. Never mind

[John Stracke @ May 14th 2008 10:13AM]

Making a Beowulf cluster out of it sounds amusing, but I'd guess you could get denser performance (measured in, I guess, MIPS/L) with slightly larger motherboards running multicore chips. That's just a guess, though.

[j_g_puff @ May 14th 2008 10:12AM]

In case anyone's wondering, the 1GHz version of this board is about £140 (inquantities of 1). Not sure what this one sells for.

[John Stracke @ May 14th 2008 10:13AM]

Ooh! Build your own laptop!

[BlackCoffeeNoSugar @ May 14th 2008 10:16AM]

Where is USB?

[hencharge @ May 14th 2008 10:23AM]

I'm guessing one of those headers there is USB

[fgpx78 @ May 14th 2008 10:24AM]

Reeeeally Long:|

[barry99705 @ May 14th 2008 10:31AM]

I've been thinking about stuffing this things bigger brother in an old linksys cable modem box. It will just fit. Throw a copy of ipcop on there and have a fairly power efficient firewall.

[Tony Rayo @ May 14th 2008 10:48AM]

If your hardware still works you might want to check out the custom firmware releases for various models of network hardware. If it natively ran linux (which many Linksys systems do, at least early in their life, later on they are normally swapped out with cheaper hardware), there is a good chance there is a supported firmware out there for you.

Also for some general consumer advice, always buy Linksys products over D-Link if you have the choice (esp. since they are owned by Cisco now). D-Link's web interfaces on some of their products are the ugliest things I have seen, not to mention much harder to navigate and easily make changes.

[barry99705 @ May 14th 2008 11:06AM]

The cable modems don't support third party firmware. It's mainly just to hack around with cool little hardware, and to replace the IBM server I have running my firewall software.

[Mike @ May 14th 2008 11:06AM]

The WRT54GL is a very capable (and cheaper) device that runs linux which can suit your needs as well. I run DD-WRT on mine, but there are several other alternatives as well.

[barry99705 @ May 14th 2008 2:54PM]

I run dd-wrt on my wireless routers.

[johnmc @ May 14th 2008 2:59PM]

I did similar with a Soekris board running OpenBSD. It's working like a champ. - http://soekris.com

[madgamer @ May 14th 2008 10:38AM]

I've always wanted to build an arcade-style joystick with one of these things built right inside the base to make an all in one stop for playing emulator games. Use an ATA to compact flash adaptor and get some cheap flash memory as the HD, and make it run this bootable linux emulator OS thing thats out there.

[Joe @ May 14th 2008 11:19AM]

Having experienced VIAs totally crappy engineering support, I find it quite easy to completely overlook this. (Be aware that the drivers for this board will be awful; VIA won't update them and some of the hardware simply won't be supported on different operating systems.)

[bartoron @ May 14th 2008 11:26AM]

VGA may be outdated, but it's hardly worthy of extinction. Anyone who is using a computer based off of this motherboard isn't gong to be running a 1680 x 1050 resolution and playing games.

[stefan @ May 14th 2008 1:31PM]

well it _would_ run doom... or quake III even.

[RichardBronosky @ May 14th 2008 2:07PM]

VGA is 100% worthy of extinction. The idea of taking the result of the digital video that comes from the GPU, converting it to analog, and then trashing the digital video, is old and antiquated. DVI-I does 640x480 better than VGA. It doesn't become relevant at 1680 x 1050 or when video games are applied. It was relevant the moment it was invented.

The video on that board, just before it reaches the connector, is like this: Imagine buying something with cash at Target. When they give you the receipt, it consists of both a cash receipt on top and a gift receipt on bottom. (That is the video in both digital and analog.) You have the ability to exchange that item at Target, give it as a gift, or return it for it's full cash value and use the money at millions of other places. That is what you get with DVI-I. Now, if you tear the top off of that receipt and burn it, you are left with VGA. Can you see why those of us who are crying for DVI are frustrated? It's like having the cashier burn the receipt in front of you. It benefits nothing. It only destroys value and limits options.

[bartoron @ May 14th 2008 4:00PM]

RichardBronosky, you do make a valid point. However, there are still lots of monitors out there that do not have a DVI input. Infact, the monitor I am using right now (a 17" Dell LCD monitor) only has a VGA connector. My parents' 17" Samsung LCD monitor only has a VGA connector, and my family's 40" Samsung LCD HDTV has a VGA connector, but not a DVI connector.

Most people don't want to have to worry about having to buy an adapter just so they can use a monitor with their computer. The TV I mentioned above (which was purchased in October) has 3 HDMI ports, but if I can just use the VGA port instead of having to buy a HDMI-to-DVI adapter, why wouldn't I?

Also, this is somewhat of a small point, but VGA connectors are physically smaller than DVI connectors. That makes them easier to plug in / unplug.

[brandon @ May 14th 2008 11:31AM]

i would have gone pico-itx a long time ago, except for one thing: the price. when it costs that much more than a normal computer, whats the point (other than size)?

[martin @ May 14th 2008 11:56AM]

what?

[Jovanny Munoz @ May 14th 2008 12:56PM]

carpc?

[Paul @ May 14th 2008 1:17PM]

I thought the Mini-ITX boards were small... http://shrinkify.com/6kf

[majortom1981 @ May 14th 2008 2:10PM]

This would be perfect to make into a dd-wrt or pfsense router.

[itlnstln @ May 14th 2008 2:29PM]

I think Coors is Frost-Brewed, not Radiation Hardened (kinda tastes like it, though)

[rock99rock @ May 14th 2008 3:37PM]

@Richard

GEEEzz man.

Bandwidth:
A data transmission rate; the maximum amount of information (bits/second) that can be transmitted along a channel

Bandwidth. DVI can output 2560x1600. VGA cannot. Higher resolutions require more bits. Just becuse you can read an article that mentions HZ and DVI in the same sentence does not mean that was the bandwidth i was discussing.

I never EVER debated which solution was superior. Of course DVI is superior in most cases, that does NOT mean that it is best suited for the job.

Go back to your corner.