Does Epia Mini-itx work?

lagoausente · Post by **lagoausente** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:05 pm

Well, I know mini-itx cpu a slow, but, how about using the Scope on that?, how about Sts latency? Will the PCI bus, delay the data transfer from ram on this mainboards?

Post by **irrelevance** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:32 am

Gotta say i've never heard of that specific make, but generally ;and this is only my opinion, you want to look at intel motherboards and chipsets as these tend to be the least problematic. I couldn't advise on any amd stuff.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:08 pm

AMD is fine without a VIA chipset, but these EPIA board are actually VIA so you most likely will run into problems, either instability and/or low PCI performance. Also these boards are pretty small, so you'd have to use a bigger case because of the Scope cards, which might defeat using a MiniITX board in the first place (i.e. might as well just get a bigger case and an Intel-based board.)

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:17 pm

I have one of those and tried it with a Pulsar One, but without a risercard (to plug in a 2nd board) the DSPs were exhausted before PCI overload.
I ran 4 Masterverbs in the MiniITX - I get 5 on Intel 815 (Asus Tusl2c), so that's not bad at all for VIA.

It's important to get the newer version with heatpipe - the original with 40mm cooler design s*cks.
You really cannot run them without a cooler.

Their main advantage is more and faster memory and the onboard sound is pretty good, too.
I've got it as a notebook replacement that's connected to TFT and mouse/keyboard in the office.

cheers, Tom