VIA Eden-N CPU

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:57 am

I just saw the VIA Eden-N CPU and the Eden-N board (a Nano-ITX board with integrated Eden-N CPU). It does look very interesting for building both small and silent boxes with.

The spec say max power TDP is 7W@1GHz, and this does sound nice for silent cooling solutions. The CPU is located next to the board edge, so it should be fairly easy to do creative cooling solutions.
I can't see any real mounting points for a heatsink, but two holes for mounting the board is located nearby, and they could be very usefull to mount a heatsink.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/images/Product ... -itx_H.jpg

Personally I rarely replace the CPU on a motherboard, so I think mounting the CPU directly on the board without socket is good to save on costs.
By the time the CPU is old the board is also rather old.

Now to the real problems:
Has anyone seen these boards for sale yet?
Any Nano-ITX boards on sale? (not counting prototype or industrial boards). Preferably with costs under $200.

The board lacks most ports, but has headers on the board for a few more things. Only ports on back are: RJ45, 2*USB, VGA, RCA, s-video, 3*audio.
It does not include ports or headers for keyboard, mouse, RS232, Parallell, floppy.
I guess this means that you have to run keyboard and mouse on USB and you just have to live without RS232, parallell and floppy.
The only expansion port is something called "mini PCI". Has anyone heard about this? Is there any boards available for mini PCI?

Linus · Post by **Linus** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:45 am

Mini-ITX.com is a great source for news on the upcoming Nano-ITX boards. They aren't for sale yet; last I heard was fall 2004 (so it should be soon). I hope cost will be under $200, as a mini-ITX 1GHz is ~$150 now.

I like that they eliminated the PS2 ports - it saves space, and you can buy a simple PS2-USB adapter for like $13 if you need to. I believe the same thing is possible with RS232, and maybe even parallel. I have totally ceased using floppies in favor of USB thumb drives.

Mini-PCI is a standard for add-on cards for laptops. Most of the cards available are wireless networking cards; a search for mini-PCI should bring plenty up.

I think these would make great small-footprint servers, firewalls, media boxes, etc. Been waiting over a year for them to be released.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:24 am

I have totally ceased using floppies in favor of USB thumb drives.

Bootable USB thumb drives? I only use floppies when I need to boot from them, in all other cases I use USB or just send files over network.

I stumbled over an interesting interview on Digit-Life today, and here is a short part (the most interesting) of the interview with VIA:
iXBT/Digit-Life: What is the positioning of C5J (Esther) core, which was announced on Embedded Processor Forum? Will Esther based products be oriented to a wide range of consumers or only to narrow specialized solutions for embedded and desktop systems.

VIA: When the C5J Esther core becomes available in early Q1 next year, it will be used on all of our processors. Due to its lower power consumption, we expect to be able to produce 1.2GHz or even 1.3 GHz VIA Eden ESP and VIA Eden-N processors with a maximum power consumption of 7W or even less. Similarly, our mobile, x86 consumer electronics and embedded system processors will be able to achieve speeds of around 2GHz with a maximum power consumption of just over 20W. It will have a bunch of additional on-die security features that will allow us to achieve greater functionality within the same thermal brackets that we use for our current processor offerings.

My personal guess is that this is both good and bad. The good part is that it looks like we can get very good and cool CPU's. The bad part is that we will probably not have good Nano-ITX boards hitting the market until Q1 2005 or possibly Q2, so we will need to wait another 6 months.
I would love to have a 7W max CPU. That heat I can cool with a cheap, small, light and noiseless heatsink and convection.

kesv · Post by **kesv** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 3:15 am

silvervarg wrote: Bootable USB thumb drives?

Sure. You only need a bios that supports it. Most recent bioses should.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 2:20 am

mini-itx.com has some more news about the nana-ITX board (Eden-N).
If seems that it will come in 3 versions: 533MHz, 800MHz and 1GHz CPU.
All of them are fanless!
It seems that the big blue anodized heatsink is included, but I am not sure about this.

Now to the sad news:
mini-itx.com estimates that the Eden-N boards will be delayed a bit more, so January seems to be the going guess at the moment.
The price on the only site that has set a price yet is 375 euro. This seems awfully high for this board.
I guess we will just have to wait another 3 months before we know for sure.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 2:39 am

All other Epia boards come with a heatsink on the CPU and chipset. So it is highly unlikely the nano version will come without.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:30 am

highly unlikely the nano version will come without

I hope you are right, but there is a big difference here.
The new heatsink is huge compared to the board. An estimate says that it covers 8*8 cm of the board (out of a total of 12*12 cm board).
Also the new heatsink covers not only CPU, but also northbridge, southbridge and possibly something more.
Earlier versions (mini-ITX) have had a small heatsink that just covers the CPU.
I guess it is just a matter of adding the cost of the heatsink to the board cost.

Since they where at it they could have just made the heatsink slightly bigger so it covered the entire side of the board.

Did you notice how they turned the board the "wrong" way for the exibition shots?
The most correct way to mount this board from a heat point of view would be with the CPU close to the bottom, and then the shape of the heatsink finns would make much more sense. So, the power connector will go what is close to the floor of the computer case, and that would make the mounting on the left side of the case, similar to what BTX suggest.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 3:36 am

Major agony! The latest pictures of the nano-ITX board has a 800MHz CPU and a small FAN on the heatsink.

Check out Epia-center for more details and pictures:
http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?n ... =0&thold=0

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:47 am

TheEagleCD wrote:The good folks from Logic Supply have just received their 1GHz EPIA-N sample.

silvervarg, where did you get the 800MHz figure from?

If the 1GHz has a fan, then there probably is a 800MHz version without. That's the way they always do it.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:45 am

Actually I read the swedish version of it, and that one says 800MHz, now I see that the english version says 1GHz. I am not really sure where they got that figure from.
Early indications where that even the 1GHz version would be fanless, but not they have remade the heatsink and added a fan to it. I guess this indicates that they do have some heat problems.

According to the numbers released by VIA the nano-ITX CPU should have the following TDP:
533MHz 2.5W
800MHz 5W
1GHz 7W
See Via Technologies for more info.

If these values are true then there should not be a need for a fan.
It could be other things that cause problems, like the close proximity to the NB. Maybe the NB gets rather hot?