Forget the rest of the world, I've been waiting for these for what seems like an eternity. VIA's 12cm x 12cm Nano-ITX motherboards are now available to purchase, reports the Akiba PC Hotline. The only snag is that currently, they're only available in Japan.
Two models are in Japanese stores now, the EPIA-N10000E LVDS and EPIA-N8000E LVDS. Operating at 1GHz and 800MHz respectively. The faster model requires a 40mm fan for the heatsink, while the 800MHz variant can operate completely passively cooled.
The motherboards have two ATA channels (one a laptop 44-pin style header), a single SATA channel, mini-PCI expansion and a single DDR400 SO-DIMM slot. Also onboard is VGA support through UniChrome, featuring MPEG2 decoding and MPEG4 acceleration. The TV-Out connection supports HDTV resolutions. There's 10/100Mbit LAN, 2 USB 2.0 ports with four more from motherboard headers. Onboard audio supports 6 channel output.
So what's the Nano-ITX form factor useful for? It is quite frankly begging to be used for HTPC and MCPC purposes. With VIA's Luke CoreFusion processor clocking in at up to 1GHz right now, it's not exactly a powerhouse. However, it's low on the power consumption and in turn heat output, which means less noise (no noise if you go for a 800MHz model) is required to keep the kit cool - ideal for something sat in a box in the living room. Couple that with hardware MPEG2 decoding and the two systems should be able to handle time-shifting of MPEG2 streams, although with 'acceleration' of MPEG4 we suspect only plackback of such files will be possible in real-time. Throw in the aforementioned HDTV and surround sound support and you have a small, yet well rounded package.
Coinciding with the availability of the boards is the availability of two Nano-ITX cases from Silverstonetek. The LC-08 and LC-07 are looking extremely sexy and superbly small. Safe to say, providing the new systems can deliver in terms of performance, they'll look great in your digital home.
So, now that they're finally available somewhere in the world, maybe they can work on getting the things over here so that I can finally have a play with one?
HEXUS.links
Impress.co.jp :: Akiba PC Hotline
VIA :: EPIA N specification
Silverstonetek :: LC-07 and LC-08 Nano-ITX cases.
