VIA EPIA N10000 Nano-ITX Review

Posted on Feb 10, 2006

Go to: Introduction Luke CPU and South Bridge Full Specifications Box Contents and Heatsink Back Panel Connectors Connectors and Jumpers Temperature, Noise, Power Sandra Benchmarks AES Benchmarks Video Playback Tests HDTV and 6 Channel Audio Summary and Conclusion

The Luke Processor and
VT8237R South Bridge

The EPIA N uses VIA's "Luke"' technology to encapsulate their Eden-N CPU and CN400 North Bridge into one (approx 37mm x 52mm) "Luke Corefusion Processor"' package. In this picture the smaller VT8237R South Bridge is positioned to the right of the Luke processor, allowing for one continuous heatsink arrangement to cool the entire board.

The Eden-N is essentially a 15mm x 15mm packaged version of the same Eden/C3 processor used in VIA's most recent Mini-ITX motherboards, such as the EPIA SP. EPIA motherboards are known for their low power consumption, and this all starts with the CPU. The Eden-N can achieve an impressively low maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) of only 2.5 Watts at 533MHz, 5 Watts at 800 MHz and 7 Watts at 1GHz. PowerSaver 3.0 technology dynamically alters the voltage and clock frequency to reduce power consumption when the processor is not required to run at full speed. VIA's Padlock adds very fast hardware based encryption and random number generation.

The CN400 North bridge connects the Eden-N to the major internal interfaces on the computer, i.e. the memory, display(s) and slower interfaces through the South Bridge. The CN400 also provides on-board video with an integrated "Unichrome Pro" graphics core, from VIA's graphics subsidiary, S3. UniChrome Pro is primarily a 128-bit 2D graphics engine optimised for multimedia playback, although it does have a 128-bit 3D graphics engine for rudimentary 3D tasks. Most importantly, Unichrome Pro has an integrated MPEG-2 decoder and MPEG-4 accelerator built into the hardware. The CN400 supports a wide variety of display types: VGA, DVI, LVDS and TV outputs are all possible. The EPIA N however has no DVI output.

The South Bridge connects many "slower" (in computing terms) external interfaces to the North Bridge. The VT8237R South Bridge includes integrated support for up to 8x USB 2.0 ports, 133MB/s Parallel ATA 133, dual 150MB/s Serial ATA, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, the PCI bus, and the less glamorous PS2 Keyboard and Mouse interfaces. It can also link to either of VIA's 6 or 8 Channel AC-97 Surround Sound codecs to produce what (presumably for licensing reasons) VIA call "Vinyl Audio" and "Vinyl Audio Gold". In the case of the EPIA N, the Six-TRAC codec is included.

EPIA N Specifications -->

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