VIA has always specialized in power efficient and cool processors, and often managed to fit them onto the most impressive and tiny platforms. It’s smallest standard, Pico-ITX, measures a ridiculous 10cmx7.2cm and despite its mere size, it houses most of your components, including the processor. VIA has now launched a new model following the pico-ITX formfactor and unlike the previous pico-ITX motherboard, PX10000EG, VIA has thrown out the fan with PX5000EG, which is the name of the new platform. To do that, create a fanless platform, it had to go with a 500MHz VIA Eden ULV processor, which consumes a single watt during load.
“The VIA EPIA PX Pico-ITX embedded board also supports flexible hard drive storage options, with one SATA and one UltraDMA 133 connector, as well as 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet through the RJ-45 LAN port, an LVDS/DVI connector and extensive connectivity options including USB2.0, COM and PS2. A multimedia connector supports external TV-out, video capture port interface & LPC interface (an add-on card is required), while an audio connector supports line-out, line-in, mic-in, S/PDIF in & 7.1 channel audio output.”
VIA’s Pico-ITX platform is perfect for those who want an extremely slim x86 platform which is real easy on the electric bill. The performance may not be mindblowing, but we’re still impressed by the size of the board and how VIA constantly manages to blow us away with its new products.
