VIA EPIA MII Mini-ITX Motherboard

I've been looking into building a PC based on a Mini-ITX motherboard with a suitable case, and memory, optical drive etc

Has anyone any good or bad experience of using Mini-ITX motherboards?

Could someone offer me a comparison of a standard system of Pentium P4/P3/Celeron with motherboard & memory, equivalent to the following EPIA VIA Mini-ITX motherboard?

Product: VIA EPIA MII 12000 1.2Ghz Motherboard
Description: Processor with Nehemiah core
Features: 1.2Ghz C3 Processor with next generation Nehemiah C5P core
Improved 3D Graphics and DVD PlaybackUp
6 Channel audio
ONE PC2100 DDR DIMM Memory slot
Firewire and TV-Out (Cardbus)

Assuming memory fitted is 512Mb


Many thanks

EPIA systems CPU power is like this

EPIA MHZ / 2 = equivelant P3 speed.
eg 1.2ghz is roughly equivelant to a P3-600mhz.

My M2-12000 (1.2ghz) benchmarks as slower than my p3-800 laptop.

If you wait a couple of months you should be able to get the EPIA SP - 1.3ghz, new chipset, new graphics chip, better mpeg2/mpeg4 support, raid etc.

However the good side is that you can stick brand new hard drives, and lots of memory to them whereas a p3-600 is likely to have a 10gb hard drive and 64mb ram in comparison.

Also they are EXTREMELY reliable - my w2k / w2k server machines never EVER crashed in the last 12months. Plus you can passively cool them with an Zalman AMD copper flower with no fan for super silent computing.

How do you find it for everyday use. Im looking at getting rid of my laptop but have next to no desk space and I dont like the look if normal SFF so I have been looking at the Cubit3 Case. I dont do any gaming, mainly browsing, Office, Internet, DVD and Divx but I dont feel I could justify the cost for such a low powered machine.

Any info on the new board coming out?

Ben

(New member btw, so HI!)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by joshwa

EPIA systems CPU power is like this

EPIA MHZ / 2 = equivelant P3 speed.
eg 1.2ghz is roughly equivelant to a P3-600mhz.

My M2-12000 (1.2ghz) benchmarks as slower than my p3-800 laptop.

If you wait a couple of months you should be able to get the EPIA SP - 1.3ghz, new chipset, new graphics chip, better mpeg2/mpeg4 support, raid etc.

However the good side is that you can stick brand new hard drives, and lots of memory to them whereas a p3-600 is likely to have a 10gb hard drive and 64mb ram in comparison.

Also they are EXTREMELY reliable - my w2k / w2k server machines never EVER crashed in the last 12months. Plus you can passively cool them with an Zalman AMD copper flower with no fan for super silent computing.

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Joshwa,

Can you use this Zalman AMD copper flower on the Epia MII-12000?

Do you know where I can get hold of one?

Many thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by milanlad

Joshwa,

Can you use this Zalman AMD copper flower on the Epia MII-12000?

Do you know where I can get hold of one?

Many thanks

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Yes you can, but I'm not sure where you'd get one now. I think I got mine from kustompcs off the for sale forums but you could try ebay or a wanted post in hexus for sale forums :)

http://www.quietpc.com/uk/amdcooling.php#6000

quiet pc still do them :)