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Everybody is building Home Theater PCs nowadays, some are good, some are better and all share the one requirement that they should be as inconspicuous as they could possibly be. Subtleness-factors include but are not limited to size and especially noise. Especially noise has become a severe problem, not only when it comes to watching a relaxing movie but also with respect to diminished productivity in noisy environments and a general factor contributing to stress.

VIA's answer is the EPIA-M, a tiny microcomputer geared mostly towards multimedia experience, that is audio and video playback with 6 channel sound and yet featuring enough power under the hood to handle the latest and greatest software applications. Granted that most applications will run faster on more powerful systems, the fact is that they still run on the EPIA which is still powerful enough to outrun any human interface. In other words, it used to be that the limitation was "how fast can you type?", now the definitions have changed to "how fast can you read ... or listen... or watch a movie?"

Not as fast as the EPIA can play them back. In addition, the "Eden" version is completely fanless, the "Ezra" version has a tiny fan and even that one is barely audible, not even in an open case. How fast or slow is the EPIA really, and how good is the multimedia experience?

Silent operation in this case means that there should be no fans, or other mechanical parts that could generate any noise. On the system level, this would include a silent power supply, as well as a fanless or passive CPU cooler along with ultra-quiet hard disk and optical drives. The two latter components are not that critical in that HDD noise levels have been greatly reduced with the introduction of dynamic fluid bearing technology and CD/DVD drives are becoming quieter as well, at least, as long as they are being used in playback mode as opposed to high speed data copy.

VIA EPIA M featuring full integration of audiovisual connectivity including IEEE 1394 firewire along the 1GHz VIA Ezra processor and a DDR interface on 1/4 the size of a kitchen floor tile.

Most day to day applications including home-theater PC tasks can be performed by the equivalent of any 350 MHz PII processor if there is additional supporting hardware as DVD decoder, and even software decoding can be done with almost any processor running at 600 MHz or faster. At the same time, the advances in processor technology, that is, the use of the 130 nm technology provides for greatly reduced power compared to older processors and exactly this is one of the areas where VIA has a definite edge over the competition.

The consequent next step is to take the low-power processor and combine it with a system platform built around a low power chipset with full integration of all peripherals into the chipset so that only so-called companion chips (CODEC) are necessary. The result is the VIA EPIA platform in its various iterations, that is, either the EPIA V based on the VIA PLE133 / VT8231 chipset or else the EPIA M featuring the CLE 266 / VT8235 chipset. The main differences between the two platforms are the use of PC133 SDRAM memory with the PLE NorthBridge compared to PC2100 DDR on CLE266 controller and the added support for UDMA 133 and USB 2.0 on the VT8235 SouthBridge.

Additional variations come into play courtesy of the choice of processor in that either the VIA Eden processor running at 500 MHz is used or else, for more demanding applications, a C3-Ezra processor at 1 GHz throws in its computation power. In both cases, the processor itself is non-removable, that is, it is soldered onto the mainboard and cannot be upgraded. Two mainboards times two processors makes a total of four different combinations, the one we are putting through the paces here is the flagship combo, that is, the DDR chipset version using the 1GHz processor.

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