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

Opening the Box and
Attaching the Heatsink

All EPIA Ns arrive with at least 5 additional items in the box: The driver CD, IDE cable, integrated PS2 keyboard and mouse cable, dual USB 2.0 cable, and an adapter to convert between the small 12 pin Nano-ITX power connector connector and a standard 20 pin ATX power connector. There was no printed manual with ours, and we don't expect there to be any at release. VIA stopped including printed manuals with their Mini-ITX motherboards around the start of 2005, much to the confusion of first-time purchasers, but presumably shaving a few cents off the cost of manufacture. The 1.04 manual we downloaded mentions a 4-port USB cable, but ours definitely only had 2 connectors. Slightly more understandably, no I/O panel is included.

Also in the box is something unheard of for EPIA boards to date, a removable heatsink and two tubes of thermal heat paste. The 1GHz version of the board comes with a fan mounted into the top, whereas the 800MHz and 533Mhz versions are cooled just by the heatsink. Brief but helpful instructions let us know that 1 tube of paste is enough for the Luke package, and 1/2 a tube is enough for the South Bridge.

There are two reasons for having a removable heatsink. Case manufacturers are free to create their own independent cooling solutions for the board, and the heatsink can be mounted over the stick of SODIMM memory to save space. Here's our 512MB stick, freshly inserted. The only drawback is upgrading memory at a later date could prove interesting.

One and a half tubes worth of thermal paste, carefully applied.

The heatsink is fitted by 3 sprung plastic push pins, and a threaded screw mounted from underneath. Anyone who has fitted a heatsink to a VGA card will be familiar with the mounting process, but to first time users care will have to be taken - instructions are not given anywhere. There are no spare push pins, and the wedged ends could be easily snapped off.

Next we plugged in the ATX to Nano-ITX power adapter cable. This is well made from thick strands of wire, as exhibited above. Connect this to any standard ATX power source and you're ready to go. In keeping with the small size of the board, we used a picoPSU and 60W AC adapter (not shown in this picture).

Back Panel Connectors -->

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