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OK, how about this. http://www.directron.com/cheap-save-pc-3.html Use the dropdown to pick the Gforce GT630 for $70 and the entire package is $317. You can do better picking some parts, but this is a full package, assembled and tested.

Terrific! a "dual core" processor (admittedly at 3GHz) and 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 memory compared to 8 CPU's and 8 GB memory of the latest consoles. Oh great the PC does have a DVD RW drive compared to a BD/DVD read only drive. Sorry this is not the same as the latest consoles and you have not even added in the cost of a keyboard, mouse and possibly a controller which if you are a serious gamer is not going to be under a $80. Also I am quite sure which device I would prefer next to my HDTV and it is not that.

Of course this site is in the USA and is no help for people in other countries who would normally pay 10% to 40% more. In Australia we would pay AU$549 for the PS4 (if you can get one, since it is out of stock at the moment) and AU$599 for the XBOne. AU$1.00 = US$0.90 as of the time of this posting..

Still to be fair the PC you have the link to is quite acceptable for general use although you would have to install you own OS which in the case of a Microsoft OS is also going to cost unless you are one of the "Green Parrot Brigade" :).

OK, how about this. http://www.directron.com/cheap-save-pc-3.html Use the dropdown to pick the Gforce GT630 for $70 and the entire package is $317. You can do better picking some parts, but this is a full package, assembled and tested.

You don't happen to live in the greater Houston metroplex do you? I ask because we have 3 Fry's, a MicroCenter, as well as Tiger's CompUSA brick & Mortar stores. We also have the worldwide warehouse for Directron. I just need Newegg to open a store and my impulse buying will be covered.

Hell even the bottom of the line AMD machines have nice Radeon IGPs that play games just fine.

So can you recommend a make and model of bottom-of-the-line AMD machine in a slimline form factor that I can in turn recommend to friends and family? Google slim AMD PC pulled up this eMachines product as the first result; is it any good? Or this Compaq?

Actually it would be more like Directron Their multi-acre warehouse in Houston, Texas has a small store in the front full of PC cases of every conceivable design and off-lease equipment. They also have several kiosks where you can sit down to browse their web site and order what you want. Once you order you walk over to the Will call kiosk and type in your order number to tell them you are there to pick up the merchandise. A few minutes later someone will come out from the warehouse with your stuff and process your order. It was hilarious before they moved to the bigger warehouse because the store was only big enough to fit 3 people before you couldn't open the front door. I can see it now. People opening up "storefronts" in a Public Storage space for a couple of minutes a day to get around a law like this.

"My $1,000 colour laser printer came with full-capacity toner cartridges."

$1,000?! Buddy you bought the printer and ten toner packs for that price, you better believe they should give you full toners with a $1,000 color laser printer.

My $99 color laser printer came with toners two-thirds full but no complaints, it'll be awhile before I print 1,000 pages (two reams of paper!) and by the time I run out there will probably be another $99 color laser printer that's twice as fast, heck I still haven't used all of the starter toner in my $50 b&w laser printers.

I had a Cisco 400 with a lifetime warranty. It died a while back. It was out of warranty. Apparently Lifetime for Cisco means 5 years.

While lifetime sounds like it should be your life time, it actually refers to the product life time. In other words, some time after they stop manufacturing the product, it's lifetime is considered over (you're expected to upgrade at that point). "Some time" is usually something like one to three years. Your warranty probably defines "some time" in the pages of legalese.

Yep, here's the Cisco warranty: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/warranty/English/LH2DEN__.html which says, "In the event of discontinuance of product manufacture, Cisco warranty support is limited to five (5) years from the announcement of discontinuance."

I used to be able to find internet documentation of this relatively easily, but today it was harder. I did still find http://www.directron.com/warranty-policy.html which says, "Lifetime is defined as the lifetime of the product on the market. Outdated technology is not covered by lifetime warranty if the item is no longer available on the common market as a new product."

I use Directron.com. They are always cheaper than any big chain, including Fry's. Service is impeccable.

I've done business several times with Directron down in Houston, TX. Prices are decent (not always at Newegg levels, but not too different) and the customer service is fantastic. AFAIK, they are only located in Texas, so sales tax in TN shouldn't be an issue. http://www.directron.com/

...and I feel your pain when it comes to paying tax on items ordered online. I have built several systems through the years, and I, like you, am building another one now to replace my old P4. After you have done your research and decided what you want, here are some places to compare prices which will not charge you tax when shipped to TN:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

http://www.directron.com/

http://www.ewiz.com/index.php

For specialty items, like heat sinks, I sometimes buy here:

http://www.frozencpu.com/index.html?id=wdw9Exum

Above all though, compare prices using these useful sites, for you may find the same part elsewhere even cheaper:

http://www.pricewatch.com/

http://www.google.com/products

Newegg is great for comparing parts and reading detailed specs/reviews, but the tax and shipping generally lead to the parts being more expensive than if they were ordered elsewhere.

I've been pretty happy with Directron. I generally buy Lian Li cases there, and other stuff. I got a nice computer badge there that has the Chinese character for "silence" on it.

steveha

Sure is. http://www.directron.com/am2vcomb34s.html

OCZ Barebone Gaming Notebook
Directron's Notebook Barebone Systems

Granted, the barebones kit is most of the laptop and you can usually buy a Dell with the same configuration for cheaper, but there are a few options out there for "building" a laptop now.

Most water based solutions don't use water at all, but instead a variety of types of non-conducting lubricating anti-freeze.

Well yes, unless it is a desktop style case instead of the now more common tower.

(It's hard to find non-tower cases anymore, the best example I could fine was here.)

How about this then?

http://www.directron.com/nf61sm7comb58.html

Biostar NF61S Micro 754 Motherboard and AMD Athlon 3100+ CPU with Cooler, $72.99

1 ATA + 2 SATA, plus nVidia GPU.

The form factor is to big to fit in the really small cases (mini-atx) and too small to expand in a big case. Besides, motherboard CPU combos at about this price with more performance are not uncommon. http://www.directron.com/nf61sm7comb58.html Nothing really special about this but the Google tag.

http://www.directron.com/wm3945agm1gen.html
OSS drivers, included in most recent distros
HTH, HAND

Please note, that this is more than just a joke. I've made a lot of "silent" machines over the years (I was a quiet computer consultant for a while), and it's relatively easy to quiet a CPU or PSU safely. Most CPU's have thermal controls that will let you run more or less fanless, and with PSU's you just overbuy and underdraw.

But the Hard Drive is always the problem. HDD's don't generally have thermal protections, and the kinds of problems you're likely to see with hard drives are the ones that show up six months to one year after setting up the machine. They also can get quite hot inside without triggering external heat alarms.

Run your machine for a few hours in its normally concealed environment. Then touch your Hard Drive. If it's warm enough that leaving your fingers on indefinitely would cause mild discomfort from heat, you need to add protections. I'd generally recommend a shielded air tunnel from your HDD, up over your CPU, and out your PSU, with a pair of undervolted lo-flow panaflo's driving the configuration. YMMV.

The best stuff for this, if you happen to not know, is probably still the forums at Silent Pc Review.

Good luck! By the way, the slower Maxtor FDB's are only a hair louder than the Seagate Barracudas, but are a lot cheaper and more widely available.

I think I'll adjust this shootout. I'm assuming the person gets paid $10/hr. as most people low enough on the ladder to be dealing with this crap 100% of their day usually are. We will assume that this is re-worded so that we are working with a homogeneous environment (email, ppt, project, active-x equivalents on linux). We'll also assume you grabbed employees trained with windows, but not linux.

>Check your e-mail on the corporate server

  - Windows: 42 man hours.
  - Linux: About 14 man hours while you have someone retrain the new person for a day. Multiple people being trained by one would reduce this.

>Prepare a flawless document in PPT that's going to be emailed to your boss' boss

  - Windows: 0 man hours, since you already bought office.
  - Linux: About another 14 man hours retraining.

>Update the project schedule that's maintained in MS Project on the server

  - Windows: 36 man hours.
  - Linux: Another 14 man hours retraining.

>Go to the corporate web site and install the active-X controll used by the payroll program

  - Windows: About 14 man hours training someone on how to install applications (most office slaves know how to use applications they've been taught, installing them is way outside their abilities).
  - Linux: 0 man hours, since a smart office would have given you an Xterm, which means the work is done once by the admin, and never again. I'll say 1 man hours for the admin to do the dirty work.

>Connect to the printer down the hall

  - Windows: About 14 hours basic network administration training.
  - Linux: Again, it's an Xterm. The admin did it once already for you. I'll give another 1 hour for the admin, but I'd be amazed if it took more than 5 minutes.

Totals!

Windows: 106 man hours.
Linux: 44 man hours.

Winner? Linux.

Step 3 of this is: If you can actually get the company to use linux, make that job completely permanent. Don't tell me it can't be done, because it has been.

Keeping the BSA from EVER busting you and reclaiming productivity by customizing Xterms so they don't have timewasters like Solitaire on them? PRICELESS.

I get non-Mac related computer hardware from an outfit in Texas called Directron. I have order from them probably two dozen times over the past five years for everything from OEM copies of WinXP to cables to all the necessary hardware to build my own PC. Their customer service, and the overall shopping experience for me in fact, has always been excellent and they have a nice selection of products (especially I note when it comes to video cards)

Another place I buy from is Provantage, though I'll admit I mostly bought "complete" products like bluetooth headsets, printers and the like. I have only ordered parts (i.e., video cards, motherboards, cpus, etc.) once or twice. Again, though the overall shopping experience was excellent.

I have found both of these companeis to be competitive on price, and, if I have found a product slightly cheaper through buy.com, froogle or the like, I have tended to still order from these vendors because my customer service experience with them has been excellent.

I get non-Mac related computer hardware from an outfit in Texas called Directron. I have order from them probably two dozen times over the past five years for everything from OEM copies of WinXP to cables to all the necessary hardware to build my own PC. Their customer service, and the overall shopping experience for me in fact, has always been excellent and they have a nice selection of products (especially I note when it comes to video cards)

Another place I buy from is Provantage, though I'll admit I mostly bought "complete" products like bluetooth headsets, printers and the like. I have only ordered parts (i.e., video cards, motherboards, cpus, etc.) once or twice. Again, though the overall shopping experience was excellent.

I have found both of these companeis to be competitive on price, and, if I have found a product slightly cheaper through buy.com, froogle or the like, I have tended to still order from these vendors because my customer service experience with them has been excellent.

You should try googling around with "barebone" and "laptop" keywords.
(you could try also "odm" or "original design manufacturer". You can also try using ODM names :"Quanta", "Compal", "Wistron", "Inventec", "ASUS", "Uniwill", "FIC", "Arima", "Mitec", "MSI", etc...)
Specialy ASUS and MSI often sell barebones.

You should land on website selling non-brand barebones, and the corresponding pieces you need (Pentium M, Core Mobile, Turion, So-DIMM RAM, 2.5" HD, etc...)

You may also try looking on websites dedicated to running Linux on laptops, because in that situation, the actual design (and therefor the ODM) are much more important than the brand written on the hardware. They usually have lists of ODM (and corresponding OEM that brand and sell them). You could subsequently google for shops selling those brands.

Or, you can go crazy and built it yourself from ground up using lowpower ITX mainboards. But you'll have some difficulties building a good battery/charger, so I won't recommend that route.

Site found with google with photo : http://www.directron.com/laptopdiy.html
Site with a list of manufacturer : http://www.laptopworldwide.com/laptops.html
Site found through google with reviews : http://laptoping.com/category/barebone-laptops/
Seller found with google : http://www.xoticpc.com/index.php/cPath/95_51_174

Another solution would be to ask your usual low-cost DIY shops to see if they can order it thru their channels : they'll charge you a little bit more, but on the other hand you won't have to pay for the shipping and handling (the reseller will bring new stock to the shop anyway, regardless of if you made an ordered).

You can buy a barebones laptop from, for example, ASUS.

Also, Alienware PCs and Laptops are supposedly free of bloatware.

from the SAME SITE a cheaper one... WITH LASER http://www.directron.com/mofxprf.html

Typical slideshow presenters: $56.00.

Wii Remote: $29.95

All that you're missing is a laser pointer, and the requisite freaking sharks.

of these
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=59 6
or these
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/
or maybe these
http://www.directron.com/contest1win.html

--Pat

not entirely black but plain looking and mostly black http://directron.com/rcb541skn1.html

• NiCad they would last about 700 cycles = 2 years
  
• NiMH = 400 cycles = just over a year
  
• LiON = 400 cycles = just over a year
  

...safer gel-style batteries, similar to those that back up cellphone towers...

And by the way - this topic sounds very exciting, but lots of people are running myth on quiet EPIA mobos. Check out mythtv's hardware database. Its not new or even hard.

1. Buy mobo, case, HDD, encoder card, DVD. Or buy one of these pre-built ones
2. Plug it all in.
3. Insert knoppmyth CD.
4. install
5. ???
6. profit... errr... I mean watch TV.

Just imagine how many neon lights and LEDs you could power in your modded case with that thing! It'd be like the sun!

You mean you can't look directly at it without going blind? Dude, most "overclocker premodded" cases come like that out of the box.

If you don't mind building up your laptop a little bit, get an 80mm fan and place it in front of wherever your laptop intake is. Run it to the 5v USB line, or a 12v firewire line (5v USB ought to be enough, but some laptops don't power their USB line). Make sure to give this fan an opening... if on the bottom, give it enough feet to get a good, clear airflow.

If you have a standard workspace, build a cool stand. Take an old monitor stand, mount some fans underneath pointing upwards, and drill a heck of a lot of holes. If you get really quiet fans, and feed them off of a 5v wall wart, you can run them constantly without any noticable noise. Or give your laptop some little rubber feet, and run the fans across the desk (though that has the annoyance of blowing air across your hands).

You can also take the fan and run it into a plastic bladder with holes poked in it. This gets targeted air underneath your laptop, but usually looks terrible.

And if it is overheating in your lap: open your legs. Nothing cools a laptop faster than spreading them. No seriously, it improves the airflow and... why are you all snickering? Geeze... Kids.

and how portable does it have to be?

There are a bazillion enclosures out there, I'm sure you've found. I picked up an "old" (but brand new) FW400 tower on ebay for $300. It holds 8 drives on 4 bridges which you can daisy chain. Came with a fan or two, and 6 drives totalling about 1TB have been cranking away for a year and a half now with no failures. It's the size and shape of a tower PC. Not really a cute companion for your mini.

Alternately, I've got a pair of Sabrent enclosures which I use for backup of my laptop and mp3s. I can take them on the road with me. They run off of USB power (USB2 transfer), and are only slightly bigger than the notebook drives they enclose. I won't say that they're fool proof, as I had to send one back almost immediatly after recieving it because it had a bad contriller board. However, they're supersmall and I haven't noticed heat issues, though they're not used in a hot environment. Down side is that they require 2.5" (notebook) drives, which will run you a bit more than a 3.5" on a per-gig basis, and you can't get a really big one (120GB max on the market right now, iirc).

Of course, you could also look at one of these which is a 2 bay, optional HW RAID 0, FW800 PATA (the old IDE/ATA spec) enclosure for $130. It's got fans and at least a bit of style, and with two 500GB drives would certainly give you room to spare.

A few features I was looking for (and found):

• Solid construction- a lot of metal with some plastic trim for looks (and it looks good)
• Low temperature- a built-in fan (which is _whisper_ quiet) blowing on the circuit board of the HDD
• Good engineering- haven't yet had a problem interfacing with my XPPro laptop (in either USB or Firewire); can run multiples through USB hubs or just daisy-chained with Firewire; movable power connector adjusts to fit your drive

If you want more info, I found:

• A little flyer (.pdf) from AMS.
• A nice video review (have to click a few things to get to it).
• And a review with a bunch of pictures.
• I got mine from Directron ($59, cheaper to ship to AK), but it's also at NewEgg ($54 + s/h).

Try http://www.directron.com/

VIA Epia C3 800MHz - $105
512MB Kingston PC133 RAM - $79.99
Sony CDRW/DVD Combo drive - $57.99
Maxtor 40GB Harddrive - $48.99
Casetronic ITX-2699R - $62.99
UPS 3 Day shipping - ~ $15
linux OS and all the GPL software you can download - $FREE

Total: $369.96

Comparable Mac Mini - $499.99

Now I will agree that the Mac Mini will have a better CPU, a better GPU, a better looking case, but is it worth the $100+? It depends and in many cases I would have to say no.

Oh, and you can keep your OSX, iLife and Quicken '05. I really don't need them on my firewall, or on my web server, on my hot spot, etc.

Now you could make things interesting by purchasing one of the older Mac Minis from Compusa or another vendor and you can get below the $499.99 price but you will end up with less RAM, but you can play this same game with the ITX system. Since you can build the ITX box specific to the application you can dump parts that are not needed, i.e. the DVD/CDRW combo drive which would be worthless on a headless box providing network services. The Mac Mini will require that you become flexible and pay for hardware and features that you may not need.

So again, the Mac Mini is an awesome piece of hardware that people should consider, however, it is most definitely not the end all be all of inexpensive low power computers. In fact it can easily be beat for many applications.

burnin

FYI, the A8N board has a couple different hardware RAID configurations built in. If you don't like the RAID 0, you can reconfigure. Here's a list I pulled from here:

NVRAID: RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA.

But my system has onboard hardware-assistend MPEG-decoding. It also has built-in TV out, both NTSC and S-Video. So it works perfectly as a standard-definition media PC -- and the CPU never breathes hard with this type of usage. In fact, mine runs exclusively as a Myth TV front end. And it works great!

The motherboard is availble for about $150.

Fanless cases are available for about $180. (I use the former case and can atest to its utter silence. My system boots over the net and has no local drives. So when I mean utter silence, that's exactly what I mean.)

So, if I had my choice between spending £999 vs $400 for a Myth TV-type system, I would go with the latter. Again.

Are you looking for something like this

• Directron huge selection and prices aren't too bad. Does double boxing for a small fee. Has nasty habit of putting fragile sticker on shipping carton which means "kick me" to UPS and Fedex.
  
• Provantagedecent selection and low prices on some stuff. Cable prices are cheap but they make up for it in shipping fees big time. Packing is a little uneven. You want a disk drive real bad if you order from them. I don't check their site unless it's something I know they have at a good price before hand.
  
• Performance PCsPC modding stuff.
  
• FrozenCPUanother modding place.
  

You have to check around. Not any one place has the best prices on everything or the best selection. For a particular part, there may be only one vendor carrying it.

Wow, someone else in Eureka! I was just in ACS (overpriced local shop) today. Their prices are at least 50% higher than you can get online. I only use them and other local shops for small stuff like fans, or for emergencies. I'm also pissed that you can't get simple things like cables at a reasonable price anywhere in town. Sometimes one store will have something decent (like Costco with a 3-pack of USB cables for $10), but there's a whole lot of driving around town involved to find them. I'd kill for a Fry's or a CompUSA.

If you want a used floppy drive or something like that, try Boneyard Computers on 5th Street. It's on the left a couple blocks from where Broadway splits into 4th and 5th Streets at the end of a small industrial-looking parking lot, so you may have to hunt a little for it. Operating hours are very sporadic, so call before going there (it's in the phone book) to see if they're open. Floppy drives are $5, plus there's all sorts of other cheap parts.

Another good place to get used parts is bsmall.com. It's a local tech that sells used hardware out of his house and a good place to get deals. IIRC, he'll ship things smaller than a motherboard to anywhere in the 48 United States.

Oh, and there's a WalMart in Crescent City. It's less than 100 miles away, but still a 1.5 hour drive.

If anyone knows of a good place like NewEgg to buy parts from that has a warehouse on the west coast, but NOT in California (sales tax sucks), post it! Please! My favorite right now is Directron in Texas, which seems like a good compromise between low prices, no tax, and semi-low shipping time.

But have you noticed that those are usually "buttons," not keys? There's a reason keys are designed the way they are -- to facilitate typing. The different tactile design of those "buttons" makes them useless imho.

(scissorkeys 4 LYF btw)

Directron has some small form factor cases... I like the ASUS pre-built one, but I've always liked ASUSes stuff some I'm biased. In general, the small form factor stuff has always worked out pretty well from what I've seen. I certainly haven't played with every brand, but none of the ones I've messed with are craptastic

There really isn't a question of if it will become widespread. Overclocking sites have had more than a few visits from Intel and AMD over the years. It's an inevitable problem with an inevitable solution. The only question is how long until water cooling becomes more popular. Heat needs have had people clamoring for Pentium M processors for rack mount gear for a while as well. It's a reasonably speed CPU that handles heat fairly well. It would work very nicely in rack mount gear, but motherboards that will take one are fairly rare.

As for server rooms, they will continue to be air conditioned for as long as all of your server room equipment is in their. Even if you found a magical solution for servers you still have RAID arrays, switches, routers and the like all in the same room. Server rooms are well known by HVAC people as requiring cooling. Most HVAC vendors will prioritize a failed server room HVAC over anything but medical. They know damn well that anybody that has an air conditioner designed to work in the middle of January in Minnesota or North Dakota isn't using the cooling for comfort.

I think MS Windows MCE 2005 is a better interface for ATI's HDTV Wonder, but it's not a cheap "upgrade" option. The OS (OEM only) costs $119 (plus $2 in hardware) at Directon. In addition, a standard analog TV tuner must also be installed. That costs an additional $60.

Extremetech has an article titled "Build Your Own Windows Media Center PC" where they use an ATI HDTV Wonder with Windows MCE 2005. They work great together.

My e770s handles 1920*1080@60Hz quite easil--what? 42"?

*checks Dell site hastily for offer*

Um, yeah, and this is very pretty too.

Oh, btw, if you'd RTFA you would know the box mentioned in it comes in black too.

I think it's ugly and overpriced. Doesn't match anything else in the living room, might as well put a beige box in there since it'd match just as well. With the vents on top you couldn't even put anything on top of it for risk of over-heating.

Want to see what a beautiful media PC case looks like? Try the Overture Quiet Media Desktop Case, or perhaps the Silverstone Aluminum Home Entertainment Computer Case in Black or maybe the SilverStone LC10M Home Theater PC Case /w front VFD (Black). If you're on a budget the Antec MINUET Piano Black Slimline PC Case looks really nice for only $60 with Antec quality but you'll need a Micro ATX board.

WTF? Certainly PC users don't care about the machine.

Fucking Mac snobs.

directron.com has a couple of epia mini-itx boards $100.