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> At about 52x, i.e. 27,500 rpm, most manufacturer's CDs blew up in a rain of plastic particles

But what about all those 52x and higher CD-ROM drives out there?

update:
There's a tiny hand-held trackball that I use quite a lot here. Its small ball (slightly smaller than a marble) doesn't seem to hinder its usability. And mousing while standing is even more convenient than you'd think.

I sent him a link to it with the suggestion he integrate a small trackball into his keyboard. His reply: "I agree 100%."

Maybe we'll see a trackball in the next design, for all of us who occasionally need to type *and* point with one hand.

Here's a place that lists it for $175.

hey, taco, it comes in black.

Dunno about you, but I think your $150 could be better spent than on a Mac case look-a-like. Even retail stores have half-way decent cases for ~$30. Oh, I guess if you're the kind of person that'ld want to put a window in their harddrive or lights in their case, this might be right up your alley, but for the price difference, you could probably upgrade at least one of your major components (bigger harddrive, faster processor, better motherboard, faster graphics card, more memory, bigger monitor, etc).

Wand then again, none of your hardware (drives, fans, monitor, etc) is going to match the case. Look at that case and imagine a bunch of white/beige components in there (makes it look ugly, doesn't it)...

this "Microsoft Internet Keyboard ($19)" is my favorite keyboard, I don't use the internet buttons but it's my favorate in terms of size and the way it keys. I have 2 at home and one I keep at work. It's PS2, doesen't have the bling-bling gee wiz features of some of the other (USB) keyboards, and it's not crap.

I think the main problem with your plan is the amount of airflow required to properly cool a CPU with just a heatsync. Unless it is a Celeron300A or C3 or something of that nature, if you use a just a heatsync you'll need an 80mm fan running at least 2000 RPM. At that speed, the noise the air makes is quite noticeable, even if you choose to get one of the ultra-quiet brands.

I finally decided to just get a new heatsync/cpu fan combo for around $30 from QuietPC and I have to say that not only is it almost silent, it keeps my system cooler than the stock Intel CPU fan. The PSU is another source of noise, and I upgraded my 300W Antec to a 370W TTGI-350SS for around $40. TTGI isn't as well known a name as Enermax or Zalman, but I've found my PSU to be just as noiselss as advertised.

I don't want to discourage you, but I don't really consider heatsync/case fan combos viable for a silent PC with an Athlon XP or P4. It might be expensive to experiment, but then again having such a quiet machine is worth it. I take great pleasure in surprising my friends by turning my monitor on the show them that my computer is already on.

TC Computers

for MB/CPU/CASE/etc

then grab a couple of super quiet case fans here:
Silencer Case Fans

I build my own this way and couldn't be happier. I'm ready to build another now and will go to those 2 places again to order.

I've also ordered from Directron and was happy with them as well.

PC

But I rely on Directron, NewEgg, and CyberGuys for all of my PC parts needs.

I built my first PC about a year and a half ago, and upgraded it often enough that with the purchase of a cheap case and mobo, I could build a second PC from the spare parts.

~Philly

• Thompsons computer warehouse -> they always contact me to verify my information, which delays ordering slightly, but they have great deals.
• Pc Progress - this site used to be butt ugly, but has gotten better. Regardless, they have great deals.
• Access Micro - they dont have the lowest prices, but they carry Everything.
• Directron - good selection and good prices.
• DV Direct - Hard to navigate (click on 'Manufacturer focus at the bottom of the page to find products easily), and they look like they specialize in video hardware, but in actually they carry some high quality PC parts, such as 3ware IDE raid controllers, you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

Tom's Hardware is currently running a feature entitled How To Select The Right Case For Your Computer which takes modding potential into consideration, even suggesting the Directron/Super Flower - 201S as a sort of "pre-modded" option for those of us too busy playing games or just too plain lazy to put in the necessary work ourselves.

try this, no IR window, but you could always mod it yourself...

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

Thanks for the Plycon link. When I was looking for Papst fans in the US two years ago, I gave up. You could find the noiser high flow Papst fans from Newark, but you couldn't find the quiet ones on this side of the Atlantic.

I wanted to add something to you your planning list: the power supply. The case you suggest is a good, high quality case, and if a PSU is included it is probably pretty good. In most cases, pun intended and necessary, to really keep the noise down one usually has to replace the stock PSU. For instance, Enermax makes makes some very nice dual-fan power supplies where the backboard fan can run slowly and be quiet, while the inside fan is faster and louder but not particularly audible outside the case. Be prepared to spend at least $50 on a good power supply.

In the last couple years I've tried the Chenbro Genie, Fong-Kai FK320, and the Chenbro Junior. The Fong-Kai came with the worst power supply, and the Antec PSU I ordered for the Genie became loud in a bit less than a year. The Genie and the Junior could probably run with only 120mm fans (except for those in the PSU, of course -- and the Genie can take a 92mm for the drive cage, if desired). The FK-320 needs a 92mm fan in back, which is the most important case fan. Overall the FK-320 is the noisest box. Both of these cases have sides that "slide" off forward or backwards, and both hang up terribly and are a real pain.

The Junior with an Enermax EG365-P-FC, a 120mm NMB on the back (could replace it with a Panasonic 120mm 'L1A or whatever -- I had this one on hand from Mouser Electronics) and also on the 80mm Alpha PAL8045 heatsink (with copper shim and Arctic Silver 3! ;-) is my quietest machine by far. I am extremely pleased with it. I should mention that this machine is an Athlon XP 1900+ with a 10Krpm SCSI drive and ATI Radeon DDR 32 AIW, which I use for gaming and numerics (I'm a grad student). So far I've not come anywhere near heat problems to the best of my knowledge, even has Pittsburgh has (occassionally) skipped Spring and jumped to summer. If I run into trouble, I can always add a front fan. The sides lift off, starting with a handle-driven cam, and work perfectly.

The links I provided are to my favorite case and heat sink/fan vendors, respectively. Directron will let you choose which PSU you want for the case, has a terrific stock of cases, and has some cool case badges (includinge Tux!). 1CoolPC has a small, hand-picked selection heat sinks, fans, and related items; typically responds to email within an hour (including questions about heat sink performance and fan noise); and will refund your money *and* shipping if you don't like your purchase. Note that 1CoolPC's website is a little slow sometimes. To buy a similar setup to what I described above (excluding the CPU, disk, and video), from these vendors, will currently set you back about $240 including the Tux case badge, Arctic Silver, and shipping. That's about the same price as a fast CPU, or a normal CPU plus the motherboard. I believe a quiet, cool system is worth this amount of money.

-Paul Komarek

There are companies doing this already. below are a few examples This one is Mac-ish looking and these could pass for stereo components. One Two Three

Here ya go... From Directron's website:

Why Weight Matters?

The more appropriate question is why size matters.

The weight of a power supply is directly related to the quantity, quality, and size of the material (thus cost) used to build the power supply. We opened a light and a heavy 300W-labeled power supplies. The heavy one has larger capacitors, thicker wires, larger transformer, larger heat sinks, more connectors, and more capacitors than the light one, all of which are important factors for the overall cost and quality of a power supply. The difference is illustrated below:

Lots of pics and interesting info. Go look if you're interested.

Keep looking, I am sure you'll find one in the right color -- if not, these guys Directron do custom painting of cases and bezels for your drives to match....

Spray-painting is kind of awkward, since to do it right you really have to disassemble the monitor, and there is apparently a shock hazard there.

Any experiences with other makes of black monitor? When I did my search, these were the companies I found that were selling black monitors:

• Acer
• Antec
• Compaq
• IBM
• Micron
• Nokia
• Toshiba
• Viewsonic

I also found Directron to be handy, as they have a whole page full of black system components.

I haven't found a good black keyboard yet. Ideally, they'd start making the good IBM buckling-spring keyboards in black again, and it has been rumored they will, but I have yet to see them for sale. Right now I have a cheapo $19.00 IBM black keyboard, but it really sucks and I want to get rid of it.

Any suggestions? Spray paint is not a good suggestion for the keyboard, since you lose all the lettering.

Jon Acheson

Will we ever see easy to change CD-Rom drive front covers to match your beige/black computer?

Most CD drives have this already, and have had it for, well, forever... and I've never seen a floppy drive without a removable front bezel, largely because some cases don't allow a bezel at all on the floppy.

There are many cases with a door over all the bezels so that even if you have mismatching colors, you can just hide it.

Finally, you might be amazed at just how well a black felt tipped pen works on a beige or white bezel.

The best online place I've seen for black cases, accessories, and bezels is Directron. They have decent prices and a pretty good record too. They have a large variety of color cases as well, along with aluminum, transparant, and random other stuff.

The real problem with all these fancy new colors is when it's time to upgrade external peripherals. I doubt you'll ever find anything to match the anodized blue and sticking a beige cd burner in that thing will look like ass. You can find black if you search. There are a few sites that specialize in it, like this.

After ironing out issues between the Adaptec/SCSI firmware and my DVD drive, it took ~2 hours to get my Linux box playing encrypted DVD's (with a little help from the friendly people in #debian).

Basically, my process was: Bootable Debian 2.2 CD installation. apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-k7; vim /etc/lilo.conf; lilo; shutdown -r now; I don't think I needed to update my kernel, but I want USB support for later on, so it's kindof necessary. apt-get install ogle, run the included install-illegal-decss-library.sh script that it told me I needed. Run ogle from the supplied menu shortcut, open and play the DVD. Once you know what you're looking for, it's remarkably simple.

I have 200+ CD's. I had most of them MP3'd before at 192 bitrate, but now I'm using abcde with oggenc -q7 for VBR OGGfiles averaging 200-250kbps since the quality is better. I own 20-40 DVD's. I want to stuff my DVD's to my harddrive because I'm basically a geek with too much hard-drive space. :^)

I bought all my PC parts in pieces following the specifications given by those nifty Spindl3top people (hi lucas :^). Including Black Slot-loading DVD, and Black LCD display. Most of it came from directron.com, or harddrive.com. Got Quake 3 and the Matrix Orbital LCD display from linuxcentral.com. Bought all of the $9.99 linux games I could from EBGames, and some of the newer ones from TuxGames. I need to buy the 'Loki Installer' for RTCW because I bought RTCW from BestBuy since couldn't wait any longer after I finally got all my hardware talking to each other.

As a technology pragmatist, I recognize that there are a multitude of competing video container formats (mov, avi, mpg) with multiple supported codecs. I don't know which tools are mature on which platform, and what quality/stability issues remain to be ironed out, which is why I asked slashdot in the first place. :^)

Looks like I came to the right place since there are a bunch of high-quality responses and no "check google you dumbass" postings. ;^)

--Robert

Here is a case Here that looks like a stereo component. Tack on an LCD display here and you have a killer computer that matches with your stereo, does more than the $1500 device and costs much much less. Additionally, you can put whatever size HD you want. Personally, I love having 160GB of Mp3s at my disposal.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Black is the natural color for computer cases, and it's damn near close to being the color of the universe too. What they don't tell you, is that they conveniently left the black emptiness of most of the universe out of their computations. If you correct for this, then the don't-call-it-beige color becomes such a dim gray, that it can pass for black.

So if you want your computer to cosmetically integrate with the universe and look like it belongs here, keep buying black. Beige computers will always look like unholy invaders from another dimension.

What type of cdrom should I get? Why Philips of course.

Nope. I always get Toshiba, because you can get 'em in black. Let's not forget what's important.

Or am I getting carried away?

You're worried that you are getting carried away? Until you start buying stuff by appearance like me, instead of price/performance, you've got nothing to worry about.

With a 5.25 floppy drive, this, a screwdriver, and some duct tape to make the resulting product more attractive, you could have one. If you happened to have one of those old IBM floppy drives that were both a 5.25 and a 3.5 in one, you'd have something worth keeping.

Some parts that went into my machine:

1. Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive. Noise level below what people can hear. 20, 40, 60, 80 GB models available.
2. Fong Kai FK-603 case. Includes duct to help hot CPU air out the rear case fan. This case got a nice review from Ars Technica. Good quality, good looking case.
3. Antec Jet-cool CPU cooler. Good cooling capability but still low noise.
4. Enermax power supply. Extremely low noise, with one intake and one exhaust fan to help remove CPU heat, and available in any power level you could want.

Furthermore, I've heard all sorts of horrible things about VIA's KT266 chipset, and now that there are alternatives, there's really no reason to buy it at all. SiS's AMD chipset rocks (if you don't believe me, read this, but if you're going for cost-no-object performance, you'll want one of tyan's mobos w/ AMD's own chipset.

Also, Creative has a new sound card out, and it has built in firewire, and considering that, it's not too much more than the platinum. And you may want to at least consider ATI graphics solutions, esp if you're ever going to run linux on this machine. From the reviews I've read, the 8500 is comparable or better than the GeForce3 in most ways. If everyone starts considering nvidia a foregone conclusion, it won't be long before we don't have a choice at all.

As far as the silent drive thing goes, insulating a device that is supposed to be conduction cooled (ie it conducts heat through its metal casing) is a very bad idea! nuf said.

Finally, those of you considering those nifty round IDE cables may want to read this first.

In closing, I would like to point out that this article was little more than a shameless plug for thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. All of the choices that didn't involve these stores were ill thought out. And you'll notice when it comes to the cpu fan, a very important piece of hardware these days, he didn't even bother telling us what he bought, only that he got it from pc power and cooling!

If Hemos ever had any creditibility, he just pimped it out to thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. Oh well. I guess in these troubled times, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Directron has a silver parts section as well as a black parts section which have colored drive faces from anything from a floppy to DVD or CD burner.

these guys are selling $179 Celeron 433 machines with 32 megs of ram, 10.0G hard drive, a 40x cd-rom, USB mouse, and USB keyboard. Ports are USB only and it isn't very upgradable... it has no built-in ethernet or the ability to install any internal cards of any type (no pci/isa/agp slots at ALL) but it's only $179. heh. Oh, and it's got a pink handle to boot. here is a direct link to the product page.

You could pop the system into this nice cheap baby black cube... Just be sure to investigate a heftier power supply for long term usage. Of course this "baby" case is probably a bit bigger than the one this system comes in but at least it looks cool!

This is basically just a shrunken desktop computer.
The EZGo is the size of four CD cases stacked on top of each other. I didn't compare the specs, but the EZGo has enough.

Check out the Taiwanese manufacturer, a product page at directron or a review at Ars Technica.

Best of all. It supposedly runs Linux!

(I probably should mention that I have nothing to do with this product. I just saw it a while ago and thought I should mention it.)

the above poster is linking to the OLDER model, without firewire and with only 2 usb ports. if you want one of those older machines, check out this link:

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

You can get the barebones system (no ram, hd, cpu, etc) for only $420. Great if you already have that stuff lying around from previous upgrades.

i haven't seen anywhere selling the newer machines yet.

I ran through this article (basically looked at the pictures) and everything, except the insulation installed at the end, was a commercial product. Not that I have a problem with that, but often buying a lot of commerical "silent PC" solutions can add up to a very expensive PC, money which might have otherwise been invested in a more powerful computer.

Why this article is linked to via Slashdot, I'll never know, as I get the impression that the majority of the Slashdot crowd would rather have an extensive DIY article with links afterwords to the commercial products (for those who want to pay for the convenience of not DIY).

---

I do have the Antec 1080 and it is very quiet. The case is large, though, so sound will echo if you don't add some insulation or what not. I did find the included Antec power supply was very quiet, so quiet I was surprised when I first turned the machine on. With some 80mm (the article erroneously says they fan mounts are 60mm) Panaflos you can get very good airflow with low noise. My current acoustical problems come from my old Seagate Barracuda SCSI drives, which are unavoidably loud.

---

I got my case from Directron and the Panaflos from Teamawe.

You could built a 'similar' system from standard off the shelf PC parts which would be cheaper and faster, grab a MicroATX case for $25, uATX m'board for $110, a Celeron $60 (?), Hard Drive (~$100), and some RAM which is ridiculously cheap right now $30 (one benefit on an economy balancing on the edge). It adds up to about $300 if you need to buy everything, but any self-respecting techie has a box they can salvage components from.

The board has audio, video, Ethernet integrated, granted integrated components are often lacking, but this wont affect anything if you use it as a small server or NAT/Firewall box.

This is obviously different to the actual Cube, that being a true embedded system.

There's smaller FlexATX and NLX kit about too. The parts and thermal solutions are scarce though.

A quick search on Google turned up this and this.

here for a book PC. a friend of mine got one and uses it for mp3's. the one he got had an option to have a DVD player too (although he has a very nice one already). throw in any big harddrive you want, rip all your mp3's in, setup the playlists, and you're almost there. i don't think these are the ones he bought, but they're like them, wish i'd gotten one though, they kick butt and i think overall price (dvd drive, large harddrive, etc.) was about $400 or so.. http://www.directron.com/blackbookpc.html
http://www.egtechnology.com/bookpc/bookpc.html

Here is something I keep considering. A friend of mine used one of their lower-end models to build a car-mounted mp3 player.

For the link-challenged, their product costs under $300, and includes a PC meant to be mounted in a home-theater environment, with wireless keyboard, optical sound in/out, a DVD player, sound card, and various provided drivers for using it as a DVD player/MP3 player. You need to supply the hard drives, processor, and memory, but that's all fairly cheap right now if you don't try to make it a game machine.

Two things stop you from having the "borg box" today - software, and the .us service-based economy. One is fixable by hackers, the other is a bigger problem.

The software isn't there yet to fulfill the vision, but even if it was, you couldn't do the full Tivo thing without cooperating with cable and satellite box providers. The latter means challenging their revenue stream - remember, they don't view time-shifting as legal for pay channels, so they aren't likely to cooperate with your visions.

You might be able to make the cable/satellite box irrelevant by doing it in software, but that gets into illegal territory real quick. The satellite people know what the DVDCCA never figured out, that doing things in software means an end to security, so I imagine they would shout DMCA. The computer illiterate masses would be treated to more pictures of hackers "stealing" programming, and all that software would have to be traded on Gnutella.

Unless someone can tackle the related problem - service-based industries with legislative protection - I don't see us having converged boxes in everyone's home entertainment center.

It's not duron but... like this?

ATI TV-Wonder PCI Tuner

and this?

Think lusty thoughts about a wireless USB hub

and this and this?

http://www.directron.com/yy0221bk.html

I bought mine from them and am happy with it, although I too replaced the power supply with one from PC Power & Cooling.

It is a great case, the drive bays are in a whole different compartment from the motherboard, which makes it very easy to work on without having to totally disassemble. The site above has multiple images, including the internal assembly.

I'm about to buy a Matrox Marvel G400. It is dual head - meaning you can display video on an analog monitor and an NTSC TV at the same time. There isn't a dual analog monitor option. This card also has hardware MJPEG encoding so I can capture video also without the audio sync problem.

I have watched the Matrix DivX using the composite output of my TNT2 card - not too bad. My computer and TV are placed far apart from eachother so, yes a remote will be nice. X10 has some remote control options. I might try one of the RF ones since the computer and TV are in separate rooms. Anyone try any PC remote control options?

BTW, you could also build a computer entertainment system based on PC hardware instead of using your main computer. Here are a couple links for the BookPC:

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

http://www.dansdata.com/bookpc.htm

Nice remote!

I'm not so sure about silencing -- if you need to put 1000 of them they might became to be quite noisy. Here is what I came up recently looking for a silent computer solution:

Molex Thermal Acoustic Products
Directron: silent components
The Silent PC
Quiet PC (UK)
Shut that damn thing up!

There are systems available called BookPCs that are perfectly suited for this. It has integrated video & sound on a Micro ATX board. It has RCA & S-Video outputs, 56K modem, 10/100 ethernet, 2 USB, & 1 parallel port.

They're mostly sold as barebone, so you'll need a CPU (Celeron socket 370), RAM (PC66 or PC100 SDRAM), & harddisk (3.5" IDE).

Make sure you get the one with DVD-ROM & wireless keyboard.

You can get them new at Directtron, or find them on eBay.

your searching talent leaves much to be desired. it is NOT a troll! ok, clueless, here's your links spoon-fed for you:

directron (a place who sells them)

review of book pc

another review of it

short specs page

another place to buy them from

MODERATORS: in the future, I suggest you try to search FOR YOURSELVES before believing [blindly] that "I searched google and found no hits for ...". sigh.. now please moderate my base post BACK UP again and ignore that moron who can't even type 'book pc' at the google search prompt. HARUMPH!

--

If you do a search on Pricewatch for "Book PC" (use the space!), they are for sale from Directron for $152 (with CD vice DVD tho). I have one, and have built about 3 or 4 others, and they are neat little machines. The S-Video output is great quality (even at 800x600), and adding a wireless kb/mouse makes it complete.... DVD models are around $90 more, but they say you can drop any DVD drive into it. A friend has had mixed luck on that front.
Definitely something to check out!!!

If you're not a "Name brand motherboard elitist"... PCChips makes some sweet looking "BookPCs". They're geared toward set-top DVD playback, and are certainly not applicable to "embedded linux." But they may be better for some than the water-cooled box with a 8MB disk-chip.

These links are to a merchant site with good photos and info:

• $269 PIII BookPC
• $152 K6/2 BookPC

I'm all about commodity hardware.

If you're not a "Name brand motherboard elitist"... PCChips makes some sweet looking "BookPCs". They're geared toward set-top DVD playback, and are certainly not applicable to "embedded linux." But they may be better for some than the water-cooled box with a 8MB disk-chip.

These links are to a merchant site with good photos and info:

• $269 PIII BookPC
• $152 K6/2 BookPC

I'm all about commodity hardware.

If you want to do it yourself, check out http://www.directron.com/bookpc.html.

Tasty little boxes, with S-Video, AV and VGA out, plus 4 channel stereo. I'm definatly considering one of these.
--

AT/ATX Cases for $36 with 250W UL Listed PS ...

V-Tech 738F Semi-Transparent ATX Case

I personally like these cases over the more fully translucent Suntek/Antec/whoever ones. Most of the Suntek ones usually come with a crappy 235W, non-UL Listed PS that is more like a 200W UL one. I couldn't power up most mainboards in it until I upgraded the PS. And they are usually $90+ with UL Listed PS.

These little $36 babies are great. They feature extra port cut-outs (whereas the Suntek are lacking). An AT backplate (for those newer AT boards with ATX power connectors), along with the standard 2 ATX ones. And a nice, 250W ATX power supply (upgradable to 300W). Not fully tranlucent, but still cool looking with the hidden floppy drive. And you don't have to worry about matching the drives, since the drive area is beige.

I like the reseller too, Directron. They do NOT charge outrageous shipping charges (they make no profit on shipping). It will cost you only $10 + $10/case to ship (quite good compared to most other on-line stores, especially most of those who rank high on Pricewatch).

And NO, I do NOT work for them!

[ They also sell the Suntek case (with very crappy 235W PS), and a matching $9 KB and $8 Mouse for it too. IMHO, you'll definately need to upgrade the PS on it, and the mouse is pretty crappy too (but what do you expect for $8? ;-). ]

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith