VIA Epia MII --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Noise

During testing, our Epia system remained very quiet throughout, the loudest noise noticeable to me being that of the hard disk - Noise from the CPU fan and coolers at the rear of the case were all but silent. Obviously, this is of paramount performance for use as any kind of home entertainment system, so full marks to the MII in this category.

Thoughts

From our looks at VIA's Mini-ITX systems previously, it stands out that the biggest leap in progress for the Epia range has been the increase in clock speeds over time - While the CLE266 north bridge has always handled DVD/MPEG-2 playback and handled it well, low clock speeds for the VIA C3 processor hampered DiVX and other MPEG-4 codec playback in the past. Now the MII sees an Epia system sat at the 1.2GHz mark, this performance issue has been eased considerably, and using one of these systems for all your media needs (Audio CD, MP3, DVD, DiVX) has become a reality. Add in to that the potential to use the system as a file or possibly even media server and the like, and you have yourself a versatile system at a ridiculously small size.

As the popularity of the 'media centre' grows, what we have here is a perfect system for anyone requiring basic movie and music playback without using a behemoth of a PC or taking up acres of space, all in a not-far-off silent system. Just make sure you don't lose it down the back of the sofa...

Pros

Good MPEG-2/MPEG-4 performance
Fast enough for everyday tasks
Smallest x86-based system footprint available

Cons

Lock-ups encountered using PowerDVD 6
No Serial ATA support

Thanks

VIA for the sample

[Pages]
   Last Page
   [1]· Introduction
   [2]· Specification
   [3]· Presentation, Bundle and Manual
   [4]· VIA Epia MII motherboard
   [5]· Mini-ITX case
   [6]· Testing
   [7]· Noise and Thoughts



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