[geeks] Via PC-1

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net>
>Date: 2008/02/28 Thu PM 03:13:59 CST
>To: geeks at sunhelp.org
>Subject: [geeks] Via PC-1

>Perhaps I was the only person who wondered this, but I'm going to guess
>that others did as well.

Glad you got it so fast...

>I got the Via PC-1 from Lionel, and I tried sticking it in a 1U
>chassis.  The result is that the sound connectors stick up too high.  If
>one was inclined to desolder the connectors, this would fit just
>nicely.  Unlike the LV and LV2 boards that have been mentioned, there is
>no problem on this one with the heatsink/fan being too tall.

Yeah, the heatsink/fan is very low on that board. The sound connector stack is tall, but it didn't seem "unusually" tall (to my untrained eye, anyway) - it was no taller than a standard ATX back plate, and they fit in 1U chassis IIRC, all the 1U chassis I have here are custom MB/Case combinations.

>This board is destined for a desktop chassis, as soon as I get one.

There are some nice "tiny" chassis, at Newegg in the $60-80 range, incl. power supply. For a little mor emoney, they have some 1U and 2U chassis (should be something nice for under $100 I figure).

>However, I am still tempted by the idea of getting one to rack mount.  I
>could remove the sound connectors, and stick it in a chassis with a
>flash drive, 2x matched SATA drives, and a FC card to use as a SATA SAN
>drive. 

MicroCenter has a nice IDE -> CF card adapter for about $12[0], it fits in the IDE socket on the MB/controller card, and Circuit City has a nice sale on 400 Gig SATA II drives ($70/each, no rebate, IIRC). At $work-1 we used to boot off USB keys attached to the USB 2.0 headers on the MB for certain applications, all you needed was a back panel USB adapter and remove the back plate[1]

I know I am flogging an ailing horse, but I like the D201GLY2 for similar applications (2x SATA 150 MB/sec, IDE, 1.2 GHz Celeron (Conroe) CPU that supports 64 bit OS and 512K cache)[2] for about $70 (same as the list on the PC-1 board), but I don't have a factual basis for my preference. I'd like a small "micro" desktop case for my Intel MBs, I've seen them, but I can't find them now (somewhere on Newegg - my temp wish lists are gone/on another PC)...

Buying a 1U rack case for dual mini-ITX MBs is very pricey, around $120 or more, plus two small 1U power supplies, AFAIK.

Anyway, enjoy your board, you got a good deal ;^)

Lionel

[0] Here's one that attaches to an IDE cable, allowing you to have an IDE CD-ROM/DVD and CF for boot device,and it's only $10: http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0255159

[1] http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0222948 

[2] Page 7 for CPU info: http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/31854602.pdf