VIA EPIA-SN1800

Author
Aron Schatz
Posted
February 20, 2008
Views
75132
VIA EPIA-SN1800
The SN model of the EPIA series from VIA is the fastest and most expandable board to date. It takes the ITX lines to a whole new level and even includes PCI Express.

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Intro:

The EPIA series from VIA has really come a long way since its initial inception years ago. When the series was first released, it was a unique formfactor. The problem is that it was slow and the expandability was not there. Fast forward a few years and the later designs are nothing like what it was. You get speed and expandability in a great size. If Windows is your thing, this board is Vista certified.

SN:

What really sets the SN apart from the previous models is the attention to expandability and performance. The SN is the first model to include a PCI Express slot. It even has 16x electrical for those intense graphics cards. Yes, this tiny board can use a powerful graphics board. Since the board is Vista certified, the onboard graphics, the Chrome 9HC, supports DirectX 9 and uses the system memory. There is much more that the SN offers so make sure to keep reading.

Box:

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VIA packages its motherboard in single color boxes. The SN series is green. Green is a color that gets much attention today.

Specs:

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I'll highlight some specs for you: 1x PCIe 16x, 1x miniPCI, 2x DDR2 667MHz, 4x Serial ATA 2nd, 1.8GHz VIA C7 CPU.

Parts:

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You get the usual literature, I/O Shield, IDE cable, Windows driver CD, and no serial ATA cables. That's interesting considering the board is Serial ATA.

EPIA-SN1800:

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The EPIA-SN1800 is a mini-ITX board so it measures 17cm x 17cm which is about the size of a CD case. The board is what you would call barebones considering it has a built-in VIA C7 1.8GHz processor. This is nonremovable and is below the big heatsink with the small fan. VIA also makes a slower board that is fanless if that is what you need.

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The EPIA-SN features two DDR2 667MHz sockets for a max of 4GB of RAM. This is the first EPIA board with two RAM sockets since the original that took PC133 SDRAM. This section of the board houses the case headers and extra serial port. The EPIA series is huge in embedded markets and they still require serial ports. The CPU fan header is located to the left.

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On the bottom of the board holds the single 16x PCIe connector as well as the four serial ATA ports. The serial ATA ports are 3Gb/s. The CMOS battery is vertical to save space on the board and is right near the AMI BIOS. The southbridge is located under the second heatsink shown.

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The left side of the board holds the external I/O ports as well as the IDE connect and PSU connector. The theme of this board is cramped. This is expected with the amount of components on the board.

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The top of the board holds the only fan on the board. The CPU and northbridge are housed under that large heatsink on the top. Yes, there are jumpers on the board. Pay special attention to the WP1 jumper near the BIOS. It is the write protect jumper that doesn't allow you to change the boot order.

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For a small board, VIA managed to pack in the ports. You get 2 PS/2 ports, 2 ethernet (1x Gigabit / 1x 100Mbps), a VGA port, a serial port, 4 USB ports, and the audio ports.

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Surprise! We're not done just yet. The bottom of the board contains the miniPCI connector as well as the Compact Flash adapter that shares itself with the IDE channel on the top of the board. Compact Flash is just an ATA connection and many people use it as a flash based hard drive. This board has expansion as the top feature.
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BIOS:

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The BIOS is a standard AMI type. It is basically no frills, but all the major options are there. You can enable and disable all the onboard stuff including the video to use a PCI Express graphics card.

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This board includes RAID support in the category of FakeRAID. FakeRAID isn't a hadware RAID solution so it isn't much better than software. If your RAID solution doesn't have its own RAM, it isn't true hardware RAID. That being said, FakeRAID is fine for most home/office users.

Testing:

I usually forgo the array of benchmarks that I would normally do on a motherboard in favor of a more subjective few. This board is not targeted at the same market as the normal ATX boards paired with a CPU such as a Core 2 Quad.

This board was tested with:
Ubuntu 7.10
1GB Kingston HyperX RAM
80GB Maxtor HDD

A common theme with new motherboards in the embedded range is the lack of proper video drivers in Linux. Before I get to the negatives, let me go through the positives. VIA supports Linux and their boards are fully usable out of the box with Ubuntu 7.10. Everything from the dual ethernet ports to the audio works extremely well out of the box. Even though the video drivers that Ubuntu ships don't work with this board (Chrome 9HC support will probably be included with Hardy), the VESA drivers work fine out of the box. To get XvMC support (to get things such as MythTV working well on this board) you will need to compile the latest OpenChrome drivers from http://www.openchrome.org. The OpenChrome team do a great job of making drivers. VIA really needs to support that team better since VIA's own binary driver doesn't work with Linux in general. It only supports a few kernels.

Another problem with the board is DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure). The DRM (Direct Rendering Module) included with the kernel in Gutsy (7.10) doesn't have the proper PCI id for this new board. I tried as much as I could on compiling a new DRM kernel module, but all I did was break my install over and over. I just gave up and left it with indirect rendering. It is slower, but it works.

You can drop in a PCIe video card for speed, yes, this will handle a latest generation graphics card. There is much more this PCIe port can do. I can drop in a real hardware RAID card and make a great storage array server. This is one awesome board for expandability.

How about general multimedia tasks? After loading the proper OpenChrome driver, the board can use XvMC so MythTV works extremely well with no dropped frames. It can handle streaming OGG with a CPU usage at around 10%-20%. When playing a DVD file, the CPU was around 30-50%. This board is an all around board that would be great for a home theater. With better drivers, it can be one of the best. VIA states their binary drivers will support Ubuntu 7.10 soon, but I suggested that they support OpenChrome.

It is faster than the »D201GLY2 that I tested before. As a similar test, it was faster by 5% when gzipping that large tar file. The serial ATA subsystem is a big improvement for EPIA boards.

Conclusion:

The SN is available now and it retails for about $250. It is a hefty price for an ITX motherboard. The saving grace is that the board does a great job of handling expandability and speed that no other VIA EPIA series boards have ever done. This board is suitable for anyone looking for a small form factor PC. If you want more gaming horsepower, drop in a PCI Express graphics card and you're good to go. If you're looking for an ITX board for a new build, this should be on the top of your list.

I'd like to thank Pat and the folks at VIA for making this review possible.
members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2364m.jpg box.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2365m.jpg parts.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2366m.jpg board.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2367m.jpg ram.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2368m.jpg pcieata.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2369m.jpg psuports.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2370m.jpg cpu.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2371m.jpg io.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/20/2372m.jpg bottom.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/21/2374m.jpg bios.jpg members/attachments/upload/2008/02/21/2375m.jpg bios2.jpg

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