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>> Find me a PC as small as a Mac Mini with comparable specs for $599.

> Any Sandy Bridge Mini ITX system.

Bull. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. You can't jam an off the shelf Mini ITX board with core i3/5/7 CPU and CPU cooler attached, plus power supply, plus hard drive, plus optical drive, into the current Mac Mini outline. Not even close. You couldn't even do it using an external brick power supply. The current Mac Mini form is much too thin, and the previous one was too small in all three dimensions. I actually tried to see how close I could come, and the smallest Mini ITX system I could make which could actually cool itself adequately enough not to burn up, without sounding like a jet engine, turned out to be comparatively gigantic.

A single company that I know of, Aopen, has made very nice minis the size of the ORIGINAL Mac Mini (which I think was a much more impressive form factor than the current one). But they couldn't do it using Mini ITX or anything else off the shelf. They had to engineer their own custom shrunken-laptop-like board inside and cooler, just like the real Mac Mini. I've had both, and they are both triumphs of practical engineering that no mini ITX piece of garbage can come close to. And the cost reflects it.

If you look at Aopen's Mini ITX offerings, you'll find that they have TWICE the enclosed volume, and crappy Atom CPUs. There is a REASON for that. These guys know how to make beautiful minis, but not using that kind of antiquated tech.

>> Find me a PC as small as a Mac Mini with comparable specs for $599.

> Any Sandy Bridge Mini ITX system.

Bull. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. You can't jam an off the shelf Mini ITX board with core i3/5/7 CPU and CPU cooler attached, plus power supply, plus hard drive, plus optical drive, into the current Mac Mini outline. Not even close. You couldn't even do it using an external brick power supply. The current Mac Mini form is much too thin, and the previous one was too small in all three dimensions. I actually tried to see how close I could come, and the smallest Mini ITX system I could make which could actually cool itself adequately enough not to burn up, without sounding like a jet engine, turned out to be comparatively gigantic.

A single company that I know of, Aopen, has made very nice minis the size of the ORIGINAL Mac Mini (which I think was a much more impressive form factor than the current one). But they couldn't do it using Mini ITX or anything else off the shelf. They had to engineer their own custom shrunken-laptop-like board inside and cooler, just like the real Mac Mini. I've had both, and they are both triumphs of practical engineering that no mini ITX piece of garbage can come close to. And the cost reflects it.

If you look at Aopen's Mini ITX offerings, you'll find that they have TWICE the enclosed volume, and crappy Atom CPUs. There is a REASON for that. These guys know how to make beautiful minis, but not using that kind of antiquated tech.

How about nVidia ION plus Penryn in 180 x 166 x 61 mm (7.1 x 6.5 x 2.4 in) including 8 GB DDR3, 2.5" HD, and slim optical? Screw that Atom crap and the designs that just can't cool themselves adequately. This has no oddball hardware and runs any distro you can name. Mine idles at 21 W AC input to the power brick. Here you go

The Mac Mini is very serviceable and I do not dis it. There is also the comparable Aopen Minis, which is just as well designed, and is easier to slap linux onto:

Manufacturer: these and these

Buy: here

The Mac Mini is very serviceable and I do not dis it. There is also the comparable Aopen Minis, which is just as well designed, and is easier to slap linux onto:

Manufacturer: these and these

Buy: here

Interesting, I missed that whole mplayer thing. Looks like Joe stepped in it. I still think he has done more good than harm for the Linux community. It seems he would benefit from a big drink of mellow.

For what it's worth, I love Mplayer and I am awed by the dedication of the Mplayer development team. The next geek toy to arrive here will most likely be the MP965D, which is to be a kick-butt Mplayer box to sit beside the PS3, which is a great media center as far as it goes but just can't do everything a general purpose Linux box can.

Buy a refurbished machine from Dell's outlet store :-) Seriously, the most important thing I've always found when buying a laptop (or any machine) is not to skimp on memory. Unless you're buying a portable gaming rig, processor power isn't really that critical and your typical bundled graphics device is sufficient to handle any kind of desktop (okay, maybe not Aero...) Came across these guys recently: http://minipc.aopen.com/Global/spec.htm Nice looking device. My main reservation about the Asus eee PCs is the screensize - my days of squinting at tiny screens are long gone.

Sound card, shmound card. If you want really good sound go with a vacuum tube;-P

Apparently all "A" companies are afflicted with this problem, since Acer and AOpen also appear to sell systems with Matshita slot-load drives.

I think this card and AOpen's i945GMt-FSA Mini-ITX motherboard could make a decent HTPC if I could just find a decent-looking Mini-ITX HTPC case.

If this form factor is restrictive, then the Mac mini's energy efficient notebook chipset (Intel 945GM) can be had in a microATX motherboard w/PCI Express x16 slot (Asus N4L-VM DH, $82 at Newegg), a FlexATX motherboard (Tyan Tomcat i945GM), or Mini-ITX barebones (MSI Axis 945GM).

Can be configured and assembled for $840 with HDMI port, Media Center remote, 1GB RAM, Vista Home Premium, internal miniPCI TV tuner, Celeron M 420 (Yonah-based), 40GB hard drive, and DVD burner.

If you don't need the HDMI port (which the Mac mini lacks), you can configure a MP945-VXR for $794 with identical specs (but without HDMI port).

Additional hard drive space should be added via external 3.5" USB or FireWire drives since notebook hard drives suck for DVR purposes.

And while we're at it, why do so many mini ITX cabinets look like early '70's stereo equipment? Just give me a cheap box that's as blank as possible and mounts a CD drive horizontally. That means the case on;y has to be 6" wide, not 11".

I want a mini ITX computer, with as small a fan as possible to be a NAS. But the whole project is absurdly expensive compared to what it would cost for a big ugly mATX.

I think the narrowest you could realistically hope for that's relatively cheap is something like AOpen's S120 Mini-ITX case, which is 7.8" wide and accepts standard slim optical drives. When it becomes available, I still don't think it will be "cheap" compared to microATX solutions.

I think the smallest you can expect from a cheap microATX case is something like the In Win BT611T, which is 12.2" wide (with integrated PSU) and $45.

There should be dozens of 3rd tier Core motherboards out there by now for people to use to make their own PCs. Instead there is one, and it costs $300. Intel is not doing a great job indicating to the market which way they are headed.

I think Intel has purposely restricted their promotion of Core Duo for desktops. The only type of Core Duo desktops that I've seen promoted (by Intel) are pre-built, small, quiet ViiV desktops. Since Core Duo is designed to be a notebook processor (low TDP), maybe they think the best way to promote its desktop use is to show off how fast and quiet it can be in tiny computers.

If they wanted to promote it as an all-around desktop CPU, they could have easily made faster versions for bigger computers. However, Core Duo's current weaknesses (32-bit and average floating point performance) would be more exposed when compared to desktop processors. I think they're waiting for Conroe, with its EM64T and improved floating point, to make their big bang on the desktop.

That said, I don't understand why more motherboard manufacturers are not offering ViiV-oriented motherboards like Asus's. Intel has been offering a desktop chipset for Core Duo for a while now. AOpen does offer a Tivo-sized Core Duo "media center" barebones using that chipset, but it's not cheap (around $400 without CPU, hard drive, and memory). It looks fantastic for building a HTPC with no external parts, though.

I'm using an AOpen AW850D, and the S/PDIF output at least seems to work well under Linux for 5.1 sound. It uses a C-Media 8738-MX chip, so there are likely others.

I want:

1. Component output. S-Video will do if there's no "tearing" during horizontal pans.
2. XBMC work-alike. I don't care about the scripting, MameoX, or XBOX games. I want to access any file MPlayerOSX/VLAN can handle over my home network.

...I want this to replace my aging XBMC center. MythTV is another option in a ShuttlePC case - but the form factor of the Mac Mini is unbeatable.

If you want Core Duo/Solo support, Aopen announced an updated version last week.

Daily Tech posted a preview of the AOpen MiniPC just today - it's their answer to the Mac Mini

• Since it uses an Intel chipset (915GM) and integrated graphics (GMA 900), he should have no problem getting Linux drivers from Intel.
• The CPU (Pentium M or Celeron M) is cool, quiet, and better than the G4.
• It has DVI, FireWire, and TV out (including component video).

Daily Tech posted a preview of the AOpen MiniPC just today - it's their answer to the Mac Mini

• Since it uses an Intel chipset (915GM) and integrated graphics (GMA 900), he should have no problem getting Linux drivers from Intel.
• The CPU (Pentium M or Celeron M) is cool, quiet, and better than the G4.
• It has DVI, FireWire, and TV out (including component video).

I would have jumped all over the P M, except there was no desktop gear for it; unless I bought a notebook PC and did some expensive hacking...

Examples:

• AOpen i915GMm-HFS motherboard
• AOpen XC Cube MZ915-M barebones
• AOpen MP915 MiniPC
• DFI 915GM-MGF motherboard
• Shuttle XPC SD11G5 barebones
• Shuttle XPC M1000 Media Center system

Tom's Hardware has a June 2005 review on the AOpen I915Gmm-HFS motherboard:

The Next Generation of Cool: AOpen's 37 Watt Pentium M Desktop PC

here's the closest you're going to get afaik
  AOpen's tube driven mobo

I should point out that they only need to move a few trace lines on a certain motherboard to make that a reality. http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/ax4b-533Tube.htm/

If anyone cares, there is already a native Pentium-M board from AOpen based on the Intel i915G chipset. No need for convertor crap. The upcoming small form-factor Pandora XPC from AOpen is Pentium-M based as well.

Why buy a computer based off inferior Pentium 4 technology? My last PC was a Pentium 3 933, my next one will be a dual core Pentium M.

http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/i915GMm-HFS.htm
http://club.aopen.com.tw/news/News_ShowAnswer.aspx ?RecNo=8327

I'm not sure why anyone even considers Pentium 4 anymore; everything about it is inferior. It's like buying a Yugo over a Honda.

I would even argue the Athlon64 is a little too hot compared to the Pentium M. It is only a few watts less than the Pentium 4 for consumption and dissipation even considering slightly higher performance.

Unless you must buy a PC today, forget it. This generation is toast. Wait only 6 months and P4 will be dead and nobody will know why we even bothered.

Being an Apple fanboi might be the biggest factor. I think the other factors are its very small size and near-silent operation.

It seems to me like an odd choice since it's one of the few computers that cannot accomodate a beefy hard drive, nor a TV tuner card, and it's not in the format of a VCR/DVD/Stereo component. (Sure there are external add-ons, but those work with anything.)

Since the Mac Mini is so small (think 5-pack of jewel cases), the Mini plus the external add-ons take up less space than your average VCR. If you think about it, a Mac Mini with the external add-ons beside and/or stacked might not look half bad.

That said, I think the current Mac Mini is a lousy choice for a HTPC. I think it's more elegant (and cheaper) to have the big hard drive, TV tuner, and surround sound built into a larger (but still small) case. Two examples: (1) Shuttle XPC (eVGA NVTV dual tv-tuner does fit in some models) and (2) AOpen B300 case (microBTX).

Even worse, the Mac Mini's G4 processor is unsuitable for HDTV (forget about 1080i) and the all-in-one HTPC software for OS X is not anywhere near as good/mature as the Windows/Linux options.

People that think the Mac Mini makes a good HTPC are probably in denial over the fact that a Mac with OS X cannot currently do (elegantly) what a Windows or Linux box can. With its inadequate specs, the Mac Mini was obviously not designed for HTPCs. The necessary external add-ons are inelegant and expensive hacks. I'm sure Apple will someday design a desktop Mac (bigger than the Mini, of course) that is better suited for HTPC apps.

I will second that. My parents are suffering with a ECS board. Also, avoid PC Chips - same company, same crappy boards.

I've heard that the AOpen AK86-L is a good, cheap VIA K8T800-based board, if that's your cup of tea. They also make a nForce3 150-based board, the AK89-L, and a 250-based board, the n250a-FR.

Totally OT, but this is what I want, but the P/N is a Japan Only P/N :-(

I prefer English.

http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/i855GMEm-LFS.htm

Why is everyone so wound up about Mini ITX? Damn expensive, and if they are just to be used as server-substitutes, not needed...

Micro ATX Desktop cases are the way to go.

Cheap, small, stackable, upgradeable, easy to work on...And quiet.

I suggest these AOpen cases, along with an AOpen Micro ATX motherboard. AOpen even makes barebone versions of these.

My firewall is housed in such a system and has worked out very well. I plan to add a few more for various other purposes.

Why is everyone so wound up about Mini ITX? Damn expensive, and if they are just to be used as server-substitutes, not needed...

Micro ATX Desktop cases are the way to go.

Cheap, small, stackable, upgradeable, easy to work on...And quiet.

I suggest these AOpen cases, along with an AOpen Micro ATX motherboard. AOpen even makes barebone versions of these.

My firewall is housed in such a system and has worked out very well. I plan to add a few more for various other purposes.

And the mother board is here!

You'd have more if you bought one of these.

It reminds me of the AOpen Tube Amp Motherboard. Stuff like this might get my respect if it was hacked together in some guy's basement, but from a major hardware firm it amounts to marketing fluff.

" I've been planning to upgrade my computer at the end of this month, and have been keeping a pretty close eye on the 865/875 motherboard and chip performance reviews. This article didn't really enlighten me as much as the following Tom's Hardware reviews:"

Well I'm in the same boat.

I'm looking at an Aopen for $159.00 retail. In this soft economy it looks like a reasonable solution. Anyone know how well it works with Linux?

Aopen's Live Update updates the BIOS from inside Windows. Never a need for floppies. But this relies on:

a) You use an Aopen motherboard. It's definitely no standard way of performing BIOS updates...

b) You use Windows. :-P

Maybe he was armed by an AK77?

If you're really quite serious about A/D quality, look into using an external box for the task. Midiman makes a couple of different, well-performing 24-bit models, and they occasionally pop up on Ebay. Or, you could pick up a nice pawnshop/Ebay DAT or Minidisc deck, and use that.

Not that you need 24 bits to transcribe vinyl, but it does help ensure that you'll not run out of headroom. Later in the process, you can normalize the audio and truncate or dither it down to 16, while preserving every nuance of the album's pops, ticks, and surface hiss.

Plug a box like this into a sound card's SP/DIF input. The stupider, cheaper, more DSP-phobic cards will generally be more likely to do a bit-perfect job of this, such as the $12 Zoltrix Nighingale or other CMI8738-based cards. Along the same lines, do try to avoid anything branded Creative Labs, mmkay? They've got bad habits like irrevocable resampling, and are noisy throughout (even when only doing strictly "digital" things with SP/DIF IO).

That said:

I used to play engineer for a streamed talk radio show. Equipment was limited to the gear in a small project recording studio, none of which was intended for broadcast use, aside from the scrap-built Linux box running liveice and lame.

Since this box needed a sound card, I drove over to the nearest white-box OEM parts dealer and started looking. I picked a YMF744-based (XG) PCI card from AOpen, similar to this one, based primarily on the component count: It was the only card under $50 which was not branded Creative, and appeared to have reasonable analog filter stages and signal paths.

It turns out that this card, along with other Yamaha XG cards, has superb support under ALSA, and that the quality of the converters is not bad.

The control of the card was such that I was able to calibrate it to the output meters on the Tascam console, and monitor the program via digital loopback through its own DAC at 0 gain.

I could then push a button on the console, and switch between monitoring the signal in its original analog state, or after it'd been through a ADC->DAC stage without worrying that varying levels would skew my perception.

In the (somewhat noisy) enviroment I was in, I could hear no difference in overall quality with or without the Aopen card in-line. This cheap sound card was, in a word, transparent, at least for my purposes. Which is all I can ask of any sound card.

ALSA made this easy, but I suspect I'd have trouble doing things so precisely under other operating systems.

But I've noticed that not all XG-based cards are made the same. Hoontech sells, or at least sold a year or two ago, some expensive studio-oriented monstrosities which doubtless sound beautiful. On the other end of things, I've heard some laptops with XG chips which sounded horrible.

Lately, I've been recording my 2-year-old daughter's various noises with an SB Live 5.1. The results are OK, but nothing like what I remember hearing in the studio. I could blame the card's on-board mic preamp or the sound of my apartment, but I fear that shoddy AD plays at least as large a role in the matter.

Good luck.

You mean like the Asus A78VX, Abit AT7-MAX2, Aopen AX4BMAX, Gigabyte GA-8IEXP, Soyo SY-P4I Fire Dragon, or Asus P4B533-E?

These are all new motherboards, and most of them are on the high end of pricing.

Firewire is more expensive to implement, period. And the number of devices that can substantially benefit from the faster speed of Firewire are very few (basically digital video... high end digital audio as well, but that's so stratospheric as to be irrelevant in the consumer market).

Stick it on a board with some vacuum tubes and I'll take it.

I'm honestly asking. Would a single tube of that size after digital processing really have a major effect on sound quality? I thought the neat thing about tubes were the warmth and natural distortion they provide (in the same way as analog recording). If it has already gone through digital processing with the inherently less forgiving limits and peaks, wouldn't that actually hurt the quality? And what's the deal with that power input near the tube?

This whole thing seems kinda skimpy on details... I hope this doesn't give Creative any ideas. The last thing we need is a PCI SB Live card with this stuff on it:
This quality Creative Sound Blaster(tm) product requires the space of four PCI slots and a special attachment for your power supply.

Here is what the board looks like. It is not yet ./'ed so look quick. =)

About a year ago I started looking for a new computer case to replace my old computer case. My old computer case was an AOpen HX08, which is a huge full tower beige case. It was too big for what I needed -- IDE cables were too short to reach from the top most 5.25 inch drive bay to the IDE ports. The case had poor cooling, was terribly heavy, was an ugly yellow-beige color, and had poor noise isolation. In general, the HX08 was not a good case for me.

I looked at cases from AOpen, Enlight, generic mystery websites and eBay auctions, Elan Vital, In-Win, ATop, and others.

My two PCs that use this case employ Windows 2000 and Debian Linux as their operating systems, named Aspiration (Windows) and Anxiety (Debian). Both systems now use the AOpen H600A.

Anxiety has a single IDE DVD drive, a 1.4MB floppy disk drive, an Asus K7V motherboard, an AMD Athlon 650 Slot A processor, some RAM, NIC, sound card, AGP video card, and a single IDE hard disk drive. Anxiety is a Linux desktop and provides your typical Linux desktop functions. I have two separate unixy servers.

Aspiration has an IDE DVD drive, an IDE CDRW drive, a 1.4MB floppy drive, a 3.5 inch smart card reader and USB port bay, uses the Soyo K7V Dragon Plus motherboard, Athlon processor, RAM, sound card, video card, network card, TV card, and a single IDE hard disk drive.

I chose the AOpen H600A mini tower case for a number of reasons. I am happy with this purchase. Here are my reasons for buying this case, and what I think of it now that I own two of them.

The AOpen H600A is a modern case. It was first released sometime in the late summer of 2001.

The AOpen website provided satisfactory pictures and information about the case to help me make an informed purchase -- something that the majority of case manufactures do not do.

The case supports full sized ATX motherboards. In addition, it also supports AT motherboards, and Pentium 4 motherboards.

The case supports four 5.25 inch drive bays -- more than many other mini tower cases of similar size.

The case supports two 3.5 inch drive bays.

The case supports three internal 3.5 inch hard disk drive mount points, plus the other two 3.5 inch disk drive bays which can be used.

All hard disk drive mount points are near the bottom of the case, where cooler air comes in.

Seven expansion slot bays in th rear of the case.

Comes default with a very good power supply, though I exchanged one of mine with an Enermax, which required some hacking to get in.

Requires only two screws to be removed in order to access each side panel. Some other's have screwless entry, but this is okay.

A nice beige color face with minimal "stupid look". Looks plain and nice. Not like some kind of freak box.

Good front panel LED lights, which are unfortunately biased for left of monitor placement of computer case.

Good cooling design, though not the best. Two large vertical vents near the front sides of the case. Air inlet from the front bottom of case. Two optional fans can be mounted in the rear of the case, and two in the front.

Some bad things about this case;

Cost is a little high. I think that myopen.com had the lowest price, along with newegg.com, last time I checked.

The front panel accessible USB and sound ports is an option and does not come default with the case.

The feet as shown with most case pictures do not come default with the case. Instead they supply short round feet, which work just as well. This case has few tipping problems.

Enermax power supplies will not normally fit into the case due to their dust filter found on the external bottom of the power supplies. In order to make these power supplies fit into the case, you must remove this dust filter and put it on the inside of the power supply, requiring some hacking, or just removing it entirely, which also requires hacking and some washers. See here; http://opendreams.net/jesse/images/20011221.comput er.upgrade/28.empty.chassis.4.jpg

Overall, I am happy with this case. It is not something that I think about a lot, but that is the idea. It is not too noisy, it does not get too hot. I keep doing my work and it does it's own. Here is the AOpen product page for this case;
http://www.aopen.com/products/housing/h600a.htm

You can see pictures of this case in use during my last computer upgrade. Find images here;
http://opendreams.net/jesse/images/20011221.comput er.upgrade/

A year+ ago I've purchased an AOpen HX08 full tower (good case btw). Brand new.. thick styrofoam packaging, etc.. the top removable part (see pic) was bent ~4 inches inward in one place toward the front. The impact, so great, bent one of the interior floppy drive brackets.

A year+ ago I've purchased an AOpen HX08 full tower (good case btw). Brand new.. thick styrofoam packaging, etc.. the top removable part (see pic) was bent ~4 inches inward in one place toward the front. The impact, so great, bent one of the interior floppy drive brackets.

A bit more flexible option than the laptops people are suggesting.. You can find cases at elan vital and aopen. Asus has numerous boards in microatx. Here's their KT133 based one.

If you want even smaller, you can go FlexATX. Motherboards are scarce, however. I think Tyan has one, but no AGP slot on there.

--

Creative soundcards aren't good, they're good enough. Without competition there really isn't any way to judge 'better' or 'worse'.

There are plenty of other sound card manufacturers out there. Look at AOpen, Crystal and Analog Devices. They all make sound cards, but why are they not leading the market? Because Creative cards are just plain better.

I have never had problems installing a Creative card. Plus, they are still improving their cards (even when they don't have to). The new series of Live cards prove this. They are amazingly above their old Live series and the competition. I have tried the other cards, and my judgement is that Creative leads the market because their products are insanely superior to the competition. Besides...how much more can one add on to a sound card???

Um, yes, it could. It can. It's called either ACPI S4 (Suspend to disk) (when it works) or "Bloody F*#%@#@ C{+#" (when it doesn't)...

The Athlon needs a minimum of a 300W peak PSU

Okay, I know that a CPU cannot possibly be drawing that much power. I imagine this specification is due to the fact that AMD expects the Athlon to be in big, hefty machines, with lots of drives, memory, etc. Throw your average (i.e., total crap) PC case at that, and yes, you'll undervolt.

and midi/full towers tend be around 230-250W

Maybe the ones you buy. :-) Even my personal machine, a full tower, has a 300W PSU.

High power PSU's are pretty tricky to find as well.

PC Power & Cooling

A/Open (I have the HX-08 case)

The Athlon needs a minimum of a 300W peak PSU

Okay, I know that a CPU cannot possibly be drawing that much power. I imagine this specification is due to the fact that AMD expects the Athlon to be in big, hefty machines, with lots of drives, memory, etc. Throw your average (i.e., total crap) PC case at that, and yes, you'll undervolt.

and midi/full towers tend be around 230-250W

Maybe the ones you buy. :-) Even my personal machine, a full tower, has a 300W PSU.

High power PSU's are pretty tricky to find as well.

PC Power & Cooling

A/Open (I have the HX-08 case)