VIA VB8001 - first board with VIA Nano

I was eagerly waiting for the first product based on new VIA Nano CPU. VIA had promised to deliver it in the third quarter of this year, however, until now you couldn't find anyone. VIA showed the first one at the ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Boston 2008, 27 October 2008. It's VIA VB8001 with 1.6GHz VIA Nano CPU, VIA CN896 north bridge and VT8237S south bridge. Board has PCIe 16x and mini-PCI expansion slots, hdds and optical storage can be attached to two SATA ports or one EIDE port. There are two DDR2 DIMM sockets where you can insert up to 4GB of memory. The disappointing point for me was a back panel i/o. You can find PS2 ports for mouse and keyboard, 1 serial port, 1 RJ-45 (VIA VT6130 Gb ethernet controller), 2 USB 2.0 ports and three audio phone jacks. It is quite minimal set of expansion ports. It would be much more interesting if back panel was similar to VIA EPIA-M700 board (I want at least DVI and two RJ-45 ports). However, everything else is probably ok. I don't know when they will be available in the market but I may consider to buy this to replace my current VT310-DP. Still I hope more products will come in several months (though I am not very optimistic).

My current computer

I've added one more photo of my computer where you could see how it looked now. Yes, I am still using VIA VT-310DP. Yes, sometimes it seems slow like a hell :). However, I can't find anything interesting enough for me to change it. I can still do almost everything on it except watching some heavy HD videos. Fedora 9 showed that it could manage much more videos than in Windows. Anyway, this thread is not about performance.



You can see how it is assembled now. Two CPUs are under the default heatsink, however, default cpu fan is changed with Titan TFD-4020M12B 40x40mm cooler. I also changed cooler in a PSU (an old one became very loud), so you can see black, red and white wires coming from it and attached to motherboard. Though motherboard does not support SATA II hard drives I bought WD Caviar GP 750GB where were two pins for changing mode to SATA I. One more 160 GB HD is hidden on the bottom of the case. I still use discrete GeForce 6200 PCI video, however, sometimes I am thinking that it does not have any advantages against integrated one for my current purposes. DVD optical drive is LG GSA-4163B. Creative Sound Blaster Connect serves for sound (you can't see it in this picture). This is it. Enjoy and wait for new processors in my collection (they should arrive soon).


Current specifications:
VIA VT-310DP 2x1GHz VIA Eden-N (C5P Nehemiah) CPUs, CN400+VT8237R
Changed Titan TFD-4020M12B cooler for cpu
Club 3D GeForce 6200 128MB PCI
Apacer AM1 2x1GB DDR400 RAM
Samsung HD160JJ 160GB
WD CAVIAR GP 750GB (WD7500AACS)
LG GSA-4163B DVD-RW
Q-TEC ADT-300 300W PSU (with changed Zalman fan)
Creative Sound Blaster Connect
Compucase 7628BS-25UG enclosure