EPIA-N8000E Nano-ITX motherboard review

At long last, VIA’s Epia-N Nano-ITX boards are hitting the shops, although initially in small numbers. Launched in March 2004, this form factor wowed the media at Cebit in that year, but at the time it was merely a load of components glued to a board with no interconnects, just to prove that they’d physically fit into a tiny 12cm x 12cm form factor.

The board is quite well equipped to handle many tasks that a conventional PC would be expected to handle, and has truly excellent power consumption figures. The size, heat output and noise levels alone will recommend it to many projects. On the other hand, this board should not be seen as a direct replacement for a standard desktop PC in all ways. The hardware accelerated MPEG playback could be harnessed and may well effectively compensate for the lack of basic processing power in the CPU, but expect to make some compromises in your project if you want to make use of it.

Epiacenter