Low cost and low power VIA PC-1 Series mainboards

These days we are working with VIA Technologies PC-1 series mainboards and compared with standard main boards these boards have special features and advantages.

Main advantage is, its lower price and low power consumption.

Like most modern motherboards these boards also have built-in Sound cards, Network adapters, SATA Support and build-in Video interface.

VIA PC-1 series is specially design for low power computing and users may be able to run this mainboard with 150W power supply.

There are several PC-1 mainboards are available and we are mainly worked with following units,

PC-1000 Mainboard

Powered by VIA C3 – 800MHz microprocessor
100/133 MHz FSB
DDR-I Memory up to 1GB.
VGA up to 64MB
4 USB 2.0 ports
10/100 LAN interface
1 PCI Slot
Realtek AC97 audio codec
Mini ATX form factor (170mm x 170mm)

Price : Rs. 5000.00 (Sri Lanka Rupees)

PC-3500 Mainboard

Powered by VIA C7-D – 1800MHz microprocessor
400/800 MHz FSB
DDR-II Memory up to 2GB
VGA up to 256MB
6 USB 2.0 ports
10/100 LAN interface
1 PCI and 1 PCIExpress x16 Slot
2 SATA Connectors
Realtek 6 channel audio codec

Price : Rs. 8500.00 (Sri Lanka Rupees)

During the testing phase we use PC-1000 with Fedora 9 and Windows XP, and PC-3500 with Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 7 Beta. Both mainboards provide excellent performance with following configurations,

Memory - 1GB (DDR/DDR-II)
Power Supply - 150W (20 pin)
Disk Drivers - 80GB IDE
Input Devices - PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse
Operating System - Windows XP Media Center Edition

We use PC-1000 mainboard for our control system experiments with slight modifications and it produces excellent results with following configuration,

Memory - 512MB DDR-I
Power Supply - 36V homemade PSU
Disk Drivers - N/A
Input Devices - PIC MCU base homemade Keyboard simulator
Operating System - Windows XP using Flash Drive (Build using BartPE)
USB Device - 2GB Kingston Data Traveler - USB Flash Driver.

PC-3500 is recommended for intermediate level home PCs.

Comments

Unknown said…

hi you have a very interesting and a unique blog! congrats. Do you know where i can buy these via motherboards in sri lanka? i am hoping to build a low cost NAS. i think one of these boards will be a good choice for that.

July 23, 2009 at 9:38 AM

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