My Epia-N has arrived!

Readers of this blog will know that I recently managed to buy an Epia-N 8000E from eBay. Well, yesterday, it arrived, only a few days after I paid for it. Shipment was pretty smooth from Japan, and the seller let me know along the way how to track it, so I'll definitely need to leave positive feedback. As the auction stated, this does look like a retail boxed mass production unit, although I haven't powered it on yet. So far, I've taken a few photos of components and stuck the heatsink on with the supplied thermal paste.

It's really small! This is the first time I've seen one of these, and while I've known the dimensions for some time, they don't really sink in until you see one for real.

Unfortunately, the unit is probably a little too high to fit into a conventional CD drive case without modification, as the heatsink and AV ports are a little high. This could be modified, but to be honest, I'm not going to do it just yet. For now, I'll run tests in a tupperware pot or whatever comes to hand, since I'll be using a conventional desktop PSU at first anyway.

Speaking of which, the adapter cable for the mini-ATX connector is quite short, and if you're thinking of using the board in a narrow enclosure, you'll probably find it gets in the way of the heatsink.

Other initial impressions: Find a supplier of thermal grease if you don't already have one: If you need to upgrade the RAM, you'll need to remove the heatsink. Other than that, it's looking good! More on Wednesday when I power up the board and start testing in earnest!