VIA VB8001 Mini-ITX Board (undervoltable?)

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:13 pm

I am looking for a low power pc, that is going to be a firewall, torrent downloader among many other things.

Found this new VIA board VB8001:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainb ... ard_id=711

viewtopic.php?t=51268&highlight=vb8001

According to this review the power draw is 35W - 52W. This is impressive in my opinion.

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 6&p=902387

But I would not need all the speed it has to offer. I could probably do with less than 1 GHz. Does anyone know if it is possible to undervolt and underclock this thing? That way it would probably be possible to make it passively cooled.

Also, as I need two NICs, would it be a problem to fit a PCIe NIC on the 16-lane PCIe slot?

I haven't seen this board being sold anywhere yet. So I have no idea what the price is going to be.

p5ycho · Post by **p5ycho** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:27 pm

I have one, bought it at linitx. I have a Intel CT NIC in the PCIe slot and it works.
Don't know if downclocking works, but it does support ACPI power states so it should lower its clock if you use a tool that supports it.

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 1:57 pm

Nice, thanks for the info.

How is the bios? Are you able to adjust voltages and speed there?

How much noise does the fan make?
Is the fan speed adjustable with speedfan or in the bios?

How hot does it get if you let it idle and turn off the fan with speedfan?

How do you like the board so far?

p5ycho · Post by **p5ycho** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:07 pm

Botanic wrote:Nice, thanks for the info.

How is the bios? Are you able to adjust voltages and speed there?

How much noise does the fan make?
Is the fan speed adjustable with speedfan or in the bios?

How hot does it get if you let it idle and turn off the fan with speedfan?

How do you like the board so far?

the voltages and speed are not adjustable. I use power management for that.
The fan is rather noisy, much more noisy than the fan on my VIA EN15000 board that is barely noticable.

I haven't tested how hot it will get without fan, but the heatsink is rather large. If you use some other system fan for airflow maybe the fan is not needed.

I had some trouble installing FreeBSD on the board with 64bit, but this is was a bug in FreeBSD. So far the board seems rock solid.
I'll be using it as router/wifi accesspoint/NAS/torrent/usenet rig.

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 7:54 am

I have a plan to use it for the exact same tasks. It is just that I think that the processor speed is a little overkill. I would like to lower the speed, which would make it possible to lower the voltages probably.

Thanks for the info.

p5ycho · Post by **p5ycho** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:43 am

There's no such thing as overkill

If the box rig has nothing to do, power management will throttle the cpu a bit. Work for my VIA EN15000, should also work for the VB8001. Note that this is all in FreeBSD.

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:20 pm

Yes I agree with you that power management will do a difference. But according to the review the idle power draw is 35W. I assume that this figure is after the power management has taken tha speed down.

My P3 1GHz idles at 28W. I want the new system to be less than that just to justify the buy (even though I know a few Watts does not make a difference in reality).

p5ycho · Post by **p5ycho** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:22 am

Well i already had figures below 35W, with a picoPSU and 4GB RAM. This was without any power management tools.
If I have some new figures I'll post them.

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 6:26 am

P5ycho or anyone else,
Are you still happy with this board? Anything not cool about it?

rapido · Post by **rapido** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 8:57 pm

I'm in the process of replacing the loud cpu fan of the VB8001 motherboard. My system is being utilized as a bedroom media center, and needs to be as quiet as possible.

As a side note, I am utilizing an ASUS EN8400GS silent NVidia card along with VDPAU linux drivers to handle h.264 ( avc ), mpeg2, and vc-1 hardware decoding. This system is capable of full 1080 hd playback, at high bitrates and profiles of h.264 quite easily. The cpu only registers around 10% as the gpu is doing the majority of the heavy lifting. It really is a great combo. I'm drawing 45 watts during such playback.

Back to the topic at hand. The direction that I have chosen is to replace the 45mm x 10mm fan that is embedded in the heatsink with a 50mm x 10mm fan that will sit on top of the heatsink. I have room in my case above the heatsink for such an installation. The new fan will cover and span across the existing relief. I will then reduce the speed of the new fan with a Zalman Fanmate II, to reduce the noise that it produces, yet still meeting the air speed of the original design. The fan that I plan on using is a 50mm x 10mm Rasurbo ULTRA QUIET.

Once the fan and controller get here, and the installation is complete, I will update my post with initial findings. Also, I can include installation photos if there is any interest.

For those interested in my methodology for selecting the new fan, I am including those details below:

The original VIA VB8001 Fan is a T&T 4510M12B, 45mm x 10mm. I have not located specs for this fan, so I will utilize a substitute to approximate the performance characteristics of this fan.

* T&T 4510M12B
Size: 45mm x 10mm
Fan Speed: 4400 rpm ( actual read from system sensor )
Air Flow: ?
Noise: ?

* Evercool EC4510M12S-B
Size: 45mm x 10mm
Fan Speed: 4000 rpm
Air Flow: 7.67 cfm
Noise: 20 dBa

* Air flow varies proportionally to fan speed.
cfm2 = cfm1(rpm2/rpm1)

cfm2 = 7.67(4400/4000) cfm2 = 8.437

* Calculate noise based upon the fan speed.
n2 = n1 + 50log10(rpm2/rpm1)

n2 = 20 + 50log10(4400/4000) n2 = 22.070

These two calculations give us the following performance characteristics of the stock fan.

* T&T 4510M12B
Size: 45mm x 10mm
Fan Speed: 4400 rpm
Air Flow: 8.437 cfm
Noise: 22 dBa

The original 45mm T&T fan is embedded in the heatsink. The overall width of the heatsink is 50mm. Since I have room in my case above the heatsink, I am planning on running a 50mm fan. This fan will span across the full width of the heatsink and cover the current 45mm relief. The added advantage is that a 50mm fan will typically produce a higher air flow than a 45mm fan. I should then be able to reduce the rotational speed of the fan using a Zalman Fanmate II, reducing the noise of the fan, while still meeting the air speed requirement.

Let's calculate the minimum air flow requirement for a 50mm fan. We will hold air speed as a constant, to maintain the velocity of air drawn from the heatsink. Air speed can be calculated by dividing the air flow by the area of the fan surface.
airspeed(f/sec) = cfm/area = cfm/(pi * r^2)

Holding airspeed constant leads to the following formula:
cfm2 = cfm1(area2/area1) = cfm1( r2^2 /r1^2 ) = 8.437( 50^2/45^2 ) = 10.416 ( min )

The Rasurbo ULTRA QUIET 50mm fan meets the minumum requirement of 10.416 cfm.

* Rasurbo ULTRA QUIET
Size: 50mm x 10mm
Fan Speed: 4000 rpm
Air Flow: 17.0 cfm
Noise: 19 dBa

Now we can calculate the speed and noise reduction of this fan, that should be allowed while still meeting the 10.416 cfm requirement.
rpm2 = rpm1(cfm2/cfm1)
n2 = n1 + 50log10(rpm2/rpm1)

rpm2 = 4000(10.416/17.0) = 2450.8
n2 = 19 + 50log10(2450.8/4000) = 8.36 dBa

* Rasurbo ULTRA QUIET
Size: 50mm x 10mm
Fan Speed: 2450.8 rpm
Air Flow: 10.416 cfm
Noise: 8.36 dBa

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 11:53 am

Thanks Rapido!

I have still not decided which parst to use for my new rig. I got a little distracted by other things.

Still the VB8001 seems to be the route to go.
I have heard another VIA board, which was quite noisy. So I will probably have to do something about the fan too, since I plan to make a very quiet system.

Do you think that it is possible to remove the stock fan completely, and only use one 8 or 12 cm fan on the case?
The system is going to be in my closet, so space and looks is not very important. So I plan to get a fairly big case for the board.

Do you get an impression that the board is mature, regarding that the CPU is still new?

Did you have any problems with drivers for linux?

rapido · Post by **rapido** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:42 pm

The installation is complete. For those interested, please visit the photo gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/rapido/Cpu_fan

The replacement fan is thus far working quite well. I am initially running it at 3400 rpm ( 1000 less than stock ) to watch the temperature. The internal temperature range is so far staying within the original range of 45 - 50 degress C. The fan noise is greatly reduced. I will likely reduce the fan speed to around 3000 rpm after a bit more testing.

rapido · Post by **rapido** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:48 pm

Botanic,

I cannot say that removal of the cpu fan is advised. I briefly toyed with that idea as well, since I also have an additional ( slow-turning ) 80mm case fan. But, I am not able to accurately monitor the cpu temperature, only the internal temperature, to experiment with that option. At this point I am defaulting to the assumption that it is there for a calculated reason, and am instead focusing on matching it's air speed with less noise.

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:26 am

Is it not possible to read the internal temperature of the CPU on the VB8001?

rapido · Post by **rapido** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 6:25 pm

Here's a current reading from the sensors. You can see that the cpu temp does not accurately register. I have a case fan, and you'll notice that its speed does not register either.

rapido@toaster:~$ sensors
vt1211-isa-6000
Adapter: ISA adapter
+3.3V: +3.39 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +4.42 V)
+2.5V: +2.35 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.16 V)
VCore: +1.10 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +2.63 V)
+5V: +4.68 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +6.31 V)
+12V: +12.02 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +14.99 V)
+3.3V: +3.30 V (min = +3.13 V, max = +3.46 V)
Case Fan: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM, div = 2)
CPU Fan: 3810 RPM (min = 0 RPM, div = 2)
CPU Temp: -36.6Â°C (high = +190.1Â°C, hyst = -77.5Â°C)
Int Temp: +52.0Â°C (high = +204.0Â°C, hyst = +0.0Â°C)
cpu0_vid: +0.000 V

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:37 pm

That is not so nice.

I googled a bit and other people seem to confirm:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/for ... 931/inc/-1

Botanic · Post by **Botanic** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:24 am

So I finally got my VB8001.
I am a little disappointed so far.
The beefs I have with the board:

1. The fan is really loud.
2. The fan can not be controlled from software.
3. It is not possible to compile gcc under x86_64 gentoo linux.
4. The pins for the USB connectors are not standard.

Anyway, I find it odd that lm sensors in Linux does not register the CPU temperature, while Speedfan does.
Here is some screens on a working speedfan:
http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=63600

EDIT:
Note that my complaint number 3 seems to be a "bug" with gcc not recognizing the VIA Nano CPU.
With other CPUs x86_64 gcc compiles without problems.

VIA VB8001 Mini-ITX Board (undervoltable?)

VIA VB8001 Mini-ITX Board (undervoltable?)

I'm replacing the loud cpu fan on the VB8001.

Installation of replacement cpu fan complete!