VIA EPIA-M9000

John Gillooly gains a new appreciation for the tiny things in life.

While we experience the rise of the small form factor PC, it is often forgotten that the mini-ITX form factor has been around for a little while now. One of the big drivers of this technology has been chipset manufacturer VIA, who has pushed Mini-ITX through its Eden platform and EPIA-M line of products.

Rather than just build tiny motherboards, VIA has leveraged its purchase of CPU manufacturer Cyrix and partnership with graphics maker S3 to build an integrated solution aimed mainly at the growing market for DIY home theatre PCs with the new EPIA M-9000. While we can all put together a system that can easily cope with the specific demands of MP3 and DVD playing, VIA has created a tailor made solution that is cool, quiet, small and above all cheap.

The EPIA-M9000 is built around the CLE266 chipset, a Socket 370 chipset that supports DDR266. It uses the S3 Castlerock integrated graphics core, that will deliver 3D performance at about the level of a TNT2, but 3D performance has bugger all relevance to the board. What is more important, and exciting, is support for hardware MPEG2 decoding. It also supports TV-Out using an onboard S-Video jack.

Six-channel audio also gets an outing, thanks to a VIA VT1616 chip that can output analog 5.1 audio or digital audio via an onboard SP/DIF connector. VIA has been producing some high quality AC'97 audio lately and this is a welcome addition to the EPIA-M9000.

If the plethora of onboard features is not enough for you, then there is one PCI slot that you can use for add-on cards. Perhaps the only pressing use for this is if you want to add a wireless card of some flavour to stop that unsightly blue cable snaking through the house to a server or broadband router.

But the key to keeping the system quiet, cool and cheap is the inclusion of an embedded 933MHz C3 E-series processor, a product often derided by enthusiasts for relatively low performance, but perfect for the Home Theatre PC focus of the EPIA-M9000. There is a trade-off between this and other Eden platform boards, which use low temperature Eden ESP processors, in that it needs a fan for cooling. This fan is the only source of noise on the board, but even at the relatively high speed of 6500rpm, it easily blends into the background noise of the lounge room in which EPIA-M9000 based systems will eventually reside.

All of this combines into a board that satisfies all our needs for home theatre PCs at a fraction of the cost of mini-barebones systems. There are growing numbers of mini-ITX cases on the market, but the true potential of the EPIA-M9000 lies in the realm of the case mod.
Because the board is so tiny, measuring only 17cm x 17cm, it can happily be shoehorned into a whole range of weird and wonderful housing. In the past these mini-ITX boards have ended up inside old hi-fi cases, dead consoles of years past, remote controlled cars and all sorts of other miniscule containers. As long as you can fit the board, which has a height of only four centimetres with adequate airflow then you can use whatever weird and crazy housings your mind can come up with.

Rather than subject the EPIA-M9000 to a barrage of benchmarks irrelevant to the tasks that it will end up being used for, we bit the bullet and subjected ourselves to the interminable task of listening to really loud music and watching DVDs. One thing to note is that the board itself does not ship with DVD software, and bundled versions that come with DVD drives are usually cutdown versions with reduced functionality (hardware decoding and 5.1 audio seem to be the most commonly cut features). So Windows users will need to bite the bullet and buy a full version of one of the various DVD software packages out there.

DVD playback was smooth and slick, and judging by the howled complaints coming from those trying to work near the Labs; the audio remained crisp and clear even at the highest of volumes. Because the board is targeted at home theatre, we also looked closely at the TV-Out performance and ease-of-use. Like most TV-Out video cards you will need to do initial setup using a monitor and then switch on the function in the driver. Once this change has been made, the system will happily boot straight to the device hanging on the end of the S-Video cable.

VIA has done an astounding job with the EPIA-M9000. Not only has it packed all the functions that you need onto a tiny little motherboard, it has done so without tagging on an exorbitant price tag. Sure, gaming will be limited to bouts of MAMEing, but who wants to play PC games on the TV anyway? For DVD, music or any other lounge room needs you would be hard pressed to find a smaller or more economical solution that still lets you flex your techie muscle to a satisfactory level.