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I looked at these NUC, but happily settled on the ECS LIVA. It doesn't have SATA, but the USB3 works and the internal 32 SSD is fast enough. Alot less $$$.

I run mine caseless, and it is really like a x86_64 RPi (even the RPi2 is not fast enough to run even chrome).

I don't know if I'd go the "Best Buy Special" route, because as a PC repairman I can tell you those low end PCs tend to have seriously shitty parts such as lousy caps, fans, and PSUs. In my experience both buying and building for customers I've found that DIY builds simply last MUCH longer, since the manufacturer of the parts can't hide behind an OEM if they put out a bad part.

I've found the longest lasting builds to be based upon business class motherboards, such as those by Gigabyte or ECS. For example I have sold several of this ECS board as well as using it for the basis of my current gamer rig. It supports all 95w AMD quad Phenom II chips, which a quad can be had for as little as $95, up to 32Gb of DDR2 RAM (and 4 slots which is MUCH cheaper to load up than a 2 slot version) which I loaded up with 8Gb of DDR 2 800, plenty of SATA 2 and USB slots, just a great solid board. And while I picked up mine along with some others in a Tigerdirect bundle, you can buy the new version for just $45 after MIR, and the new one supports DDR 3.

So while you can if you get lucky save a couple of bucks buying the low end "Best Buy Special" I'd say in the long run it simply isn't worth it. By going DIY you'll have a machine that will easily outlast the special by two times or more. I should know as I've had to part out more "Best Buy Specials" than I can even count, whereas the only DIY builds I've sold that I can think of off hand that are dead was one lightning strike and one where the guy refused to shut it off when his AC when out in July and cooked it. Not to mention it also removes a lot of headaches, as those specials tend to develop "weird" errors long before they die, such as data corruption or cutting off by itself. A shitty non popped cap or bad trace can be impossible to see but cause all kinds of hell.

Well to be fair I've always preferred to build my own, which allows me to ensure quality parts. When I did get a prebuilt I always went with business class, which just seem to use better caps and thicker boards.

And yes, there are business class AMD boards. For an example here is the board that I have as well have used in several business PCs which I have sold. With a business class you don't get Crossfire or any of the gamer stuff, but the boards seem to be built with better caps and the drivers are rock solid stable. It really is a great board, supports 16Gb of DDR2 RAM, runs the Phenom 2 95w quads with nary a hiccup, 6 SATA slots, Gigabit Ethernet,onboard Radeon 3100 and 8 channel surround sound.

With the great prices on AMD Triples and Quads I have been doing pretty brisk business selling AMD business class to my office customers, and so far they couldn't be happier. Don't judge a book by the cover I say, and in this economy bang for the buck matters a lot.

Nobody else has mentioned this yet, but had it occurred to anyone that (if real) it doesn't include a battery?

I know of at least one Elitegroup Computer System (ECS) laptop that I set up for a friend didn't have one.

Her husband is in the Canadian military and he sent it to her from an assignment he was on in the middle east (pre-Iraq war), included only some Linux distro that I'd never heard of (don't recall what it was to this day)...

It was quite a bargain as I recall, but was very bare bones. No battery, no OS, VIA C3 CPU at 700MHz, 256mb RAM, 10gb hard disk. I would've loved to get one, but I was never able to scrounge up the money to get him to send another, just finishing up high school at the time.

Who is to say this one can't be something like that?

I have a "old" laptop w/ a Transmeta processor and it scales very very well. Windows XP, DVD on fullscreen w/ smartbob, etc. No complains.

Is it considered "safe" to buy any of the Nvidia chipset motherboards, or are they still pretty sketchy?

I have an ECS N2U400-A motherboard with an NVidia N Force 2 Ultra chipset. It's fantastic. Rock solid stable and fast.

Don't take my word for it, google up some reviews of motherboards with the chipset. It's good stuff.

LK

"The real news [...] when a vendor makes a notebook without a battery."

ECS A900, battery optional, no PCMCIA slot. ECS also did a truly no battery possible 'laptop', but based around a VIA C3 CPU.

Forgive me, I just started doing a little research when I read your story. Of course I started with 'open notebook' and related searches, but I didn't find anything. Anyone know of any industry group trying to create and open standard there?

Anyhow, I'm interested in your problem for selfish reasons, family and friends have been asking me about building/upgrading existing/fixing their notebooks for years. I've dodged them this whole time because I couldn't afford one myself, but this is finally starting to change.

So, anyhow, if I where going to buy a computer today I'd look seriously at building a 'barebones' notebooks. A few familiar companies seem to be building barebones notebooks, which is basically a motherboard and graphics card wrapped up with a keyboard, LCD screen and a case. ASUS, ECS, AOpen, Arima (??) and FIC seem to sell them. I couldn't guarantee it, but I bet you'd have much better luck getting a replacement part from someone like ECS or ASUS, plus you get to pick out or upgrade things like your CPU, hard/cd/dvd drive and memory.

Here are a couple of quick links to product pages for a few of the manufacturers:

Aopen
ECS
ASUS
Arima
FIC

Most of these links came from this site, which seems to specialize in mobile computing bare bone systems and hardware. Man, is it lunch time yet?

IMO, stability outweighs all other concerns. I've been putting together my own systems since the days of the 386, and in that time I've used x86 chips from AMD, NextGen, Cyrix, IBM and Intel. The one thing I've leared is that nothing beats the combination of an Intel CPU on an Intel Motherboard.

HTF did this tripe get modded insightful? The stability "argument" was debunked long ago. As long as you're not buying truly cheap -ass parts, stability is not generally going to be an issue. While I do have a pair of 500-MHz P!!!s on an N440BX running my website and mail server, I wouldn't rate it as any more or less reliable than the K6-* and Athlon systems I've built. (With two free processors and the motherboard obtained through eBay for ~$70, it was a cheap way to get into Linux SMP.) Those other systems have been built around decent motherboards and other components, and I would put any of them up against any Intel solution WRT stability or reliability.

Added Information:

I wrote the Slashdot story. I've gotten additional information since then:

First, I don't see any evidence of low quality in ECS motherboards. Both ECS and Fry's employees say that the high rate of returns is due to the fact that the low cost attracts people who are very inexperienced at building computers. That seems right to me. An ECS sales representative mentions that Fry's uses ECS motherboards in the computers it builds. The ECS motherboards are suitable for business use. They may not be the best for overclockers or gamers.

I wrote a long letter to Promise Technology Technical Support about the fact that Promise is allowing ECS motherboards with Promise RAID mirroring controlers to be sold without software that is necessary to monitor the health of the mirror. The letter is below, and represents my opinions at the time. Even though the national sales manager of Promise suggested I send the letter, there was no answer.

Below the letter is all information and opinions that I had available at the time.

___________________


TO:
Kevin Hong
Promise Technology Technical Support Engineer


Kevin,

Jason Turk told me to write to you about a problem with Elitegroup's L7VTA Rev. 1.0 motherboard, which includes a Promise RAID controller chip.

Elitegroup says they have never been provided the FastCheck or PAM monitoring software for this motherboard. Can you supply monitoring software that is certified by Promise to work? The software is not on the CD supplied with the motherboard.

We need not just software that appears to work, we need software that is certified by Promise Technology to work with this motherboard. Several people at Promise have told me that the software provided on the Promise web site for the Promise RAID controller adapter cards may not work with the OEM controller chips installed on motherboards. I suspect this is not true, but merely a Promise Technology marketing scheme. However, we can't risk selling these to our customers and finding later that there is some hidden serious defect.

Thanks,

Michael Jennings
Futurepower Computer Systems

_______________________________


Complete Information:

So that all the information to resolve this issue is supplied in one place, I have provided everything that I know and think below:

Some versions of the Elitegroup L7VTA Rev. 1.0 motherboards are being supplied with Promise Technology's PDC20265R IDE RAID controller. Elitegroup supplies three of the four elements needed for a RAID controller. The motherboard and included CD have 1) Promise Technology's PDC20265R ASIC chip, 2) the latest version of the BIOS, 3) and the driver software.

However, item 4 is missing. Elitegroup says Promise Technology never supplied RAID array monitoring software for this chip. Promise Technology calls this software the "FastCheck" or the "PAM, Promise Array Management" utility. Without this software, the user cannot know if a hard drive has failed in the RAID 0 or RAID 1 or RAID 0,1 array.

This issue is Elitegroup's Case number RAE54616. (Note that Elitegroup also calls themselves "ECS".)

Elitegroup's web page for the L7VTA product is here:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/pd_spec.asp?product _id=327

The L7VTA V1.0 driver page is here, showing the latest Promise drivers:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/dw_spec.asp?product _id=63

Promise Technology's web page for on-motherboard RAID controllers is here:
http://www.promise.com/product/oem_ataraid_pdc2026 5r_eng.htm

Note that this Promise web page mentions all four elements of a

Added Information:

I wrote the Slashdot story. I've gotten additional information since then:

First, I don't see any evidence of low quality in ECS motherboards. Both ECS and Fry's employees say that the high rate of returns is due to the fact that the low cost attracts people who are very inexperienced at building computers. That seems right to me. An ECS sales representative mentions that Fry's uses ECS motherboards in the computers it builds. The ECS motherboards are suitable for business use. They may not be the best for overclockers or gamers.

I wrote a long letter to Promise Technology Technical Support about the fact that Promise is allowing ECS motherboards with Promise RAID mirroring controlers to be sold without software that is necessary to monitor the health of the mirror. The letter is below, and represents my opinions at the time. Even though the national sales manager of Promise suggested I send the letter, there was no answer.

Below the letter is all information and opinions that I had available at the time.

___________________


TO:
Kevin Hong
Promise Technology Technical Support Engineer


Kevin,

Jason Turk told me to write to you about a problem with Elitegroup's L7VTA Rev. 1.0 motherboard, which includes a Promise RAID controller chip.

Elitegroup says they have never been provided the FastCheck or PAM monitoring software for this motherboard. Can you supply monitoring software that is certified by Promise to work? The software is not on the CD supplied with the motherboard.

We need not just software that appears to work, we need software that is certified by Promise Technology to work with this motherboard. Several people at Promise have told me that the software provided on the Promise web site for the Promise RAID controller adapter cards may not work with the OEM controller chips installed on motherboards. I suspect this is not true, but merely a Promise Technology marketing scheme. However, we can't risk selling these to our customers and finding later that there is some hidden serious defect.

Thanks,

Michael Jennings
Futurepower Computer Systems

_______________________________


Complete Information:

So that all the information to resolve this issue is supplied in one place, I have provided everything that I know and think below:

Some versions of the Elitegroup L7VTA Rev. 1.0 motherboards are being supplied with Promise Technology's PDC20265R IDE RAID controller. Elitegroup supplies three of the four elements needed for a RAID controller. The motherboard and included CD have 1) Promise Technology's PDC20265R ASIC chip, 2) the latest version of the BIOS, 3) and the driver software.

However, item 4 is missing. Elitegroup says Promise Technology never supplied RAID array monitoring software for this chip. Promise Technology calls this software the "FastCheck" or the "PAM, Promise Array Management" utility. Without this software, the user cannot know if a hard drive has failed in the RAID 0 or RAID 1 or RAID 0,1 array.

This issue is Elitegroup's Case number RAE54616. (Note that Elitegroup also calls themselves "ECS".)

Elitegroup's web page for the L7VTA product is here:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/pd_spec.asp?product _id=327

The L7VTA V1.0 driver page is here, showing the latest Promise drivers:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/dw_spec.asp?product _id=63

Promise Technology's web page for on-motherboard RAID controllers is here:
http://www.promise.com/product/oem_ataraid_pdc2026 5r_eng.htm

Note that this Promise web page mentions all four elements of a

You are indeed correct, the system is the ECS U-Buddie IN22 (or as they sometimes call it, the Em-22, it seems to depend on who you talk to at ECS about the product).

The company that one of my customers has purchased the systems from directly is a wholesale distributor. Sadly, they do not sell computer systems or equipment to end users. This company sells to Canadian business entities with a Canadian Provincial Sales Tax Permit. However, you should be able to find local distributors for this product.

Back to my case, If you are wanting to purchase the IN22 with the wireless keyboard, this company is selling the "complete" systems with the wireless keyboards for about USD$239 each (it's about CDN$379).

ECS does have distributors worldwide. The web page for their local contacts is at: http://www.ecs.com.tw/contact/contact_index.asp.

After doing some google-digging, I believe the system he's talking about is the u-Buddy.
Here's some info I found:
A page at ECS describing the specs
A place selling them for $279
If anyone can find a place that's confirmed selling them at $199, I'd be very interested.

Actually that sounds like the ECS DeskNote

Here's a direct link to the manufacturer's website:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/a980.htm

and here's a mirror for the ineviatable slashdotting:
http://www.meatspace.co.uk/ibuddie/

First of all, laptop kit:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/ibuddiexp.htm

Second of all, cheap tablet:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/13/203524 7&mode=nested&tid=137

here's the actual tablet:
http://www.stepupcomputing.com/products.asp

Ok, Well after reading the first hundred or so posts I've realized that most of you are strokeing your ego's and not awnsering the man's question!

Now, Simply put here are some sites that contain a lot of information to digest.
Tom's Hardware
AnandTech

Now here is a list of components to pick, and please do your self a favour and do some resarch before hand, get some do's and dont's and faq's stuck in your skull before spending any hard earned dough.

BTW I build systems on the side for the not so techniclly apt (as I'm sure many /. readers do for friends and family!).

Heres your shopping list
1. CASE w/PS (at least 350W ATX and a size you could "Grow" into)
2. Mother Board (Think long and hard about this one as it is a more important choice than even your CPU or RAM). Personal recomendations include ECS, MSI, Asus, and if you like spending money Tyan. Not to mention Gigabyte, Abit and shuttle, however if you visit the both tom's and anands they will have all the links for you with recent information and benchmarks. 3. CPU (what ever you want to spend on this will directly determine the capabilities of your system hence money=power!)
4. Ram (your options are limited by the capablilties of your motherboard.).
5. Video (again do you play video games or do you simply fart around in office all day and surf the net?). And if you play video games how much power do you need (can you afford to spend upwards of $400 on a card?).
6. Sound (Are you a musicaian, do you want home-theatre quality or is the AC'97 on the motherboard good enough for you?).
7. Optical devices (DVD, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVDRW?) again functionality direclty determined by price. DVDRW drives cost roughly $300 - $500 and the media is $4 to $8 per (and when you screw up they make expensive coasters). On the other hand I pay about 12 cents us per blank CD-R. (I purchase bulk!).
8. Storage (again price determins functionality). all drives now start at around 40GB and cost about $70 to $150.

9. Printing/Scaning (do you need a multifunction device to deal with the "real" paper world?).

10. Lastly but definitly most important! Connectivity! Will you get DSL? Do you already have a DOCSIS compliant cable provider in your area? or are you stuck with a measly little 56K modem? (I'm sorry I'm biased by my Canauk 3.5MB/s DSL.) The choice is simple if you get a modem stick with USRobitics or GVC. (both have lifetime warrenties). If you get a NIC (Network Interface Card), then you may consider weather or not you'll use the added features of a $50 3Com or weather or not a $10 Realtek will do?

Now you have a lot of foot work to do, quotes are a bitch! I only say that haveing worked in a computer store sales environment. They take time effort and forethought. You will get out of it what you put into it. If you simply think "Ok I'll get one of those dell's or compaq's and add what I need as I go!" well then you will be stuck with whatever decisions you make. Keep in mind computer parts depreceate faster than Ford Pinto's! So if you maintain a steady investment then you will have great preformance at price point that would make any scrouge druel. Stay away from used hardware unles it has a warrenty! Refurbished monitors are a huge saveings and have a one year warrenty. Realisticly you should simply say "This is my budget and this is what I need!" If you know what your doing (after all that reading!) then you'll get a killer deal. If you like you can even email me and I'll send you a quote .

A note to the rest of you /.'ers my first computoy was a crappy zenith vic clone that turned up the daisy's to a cup of tea across the keyboard. Peek and Poke are KEWL! The second system I used was a MICOM (Text ONLY! muahahah in beautiful PUKE ORANGE!), and the first color system I ever touched was a comodore 128 (with a whopping 128K). The first system I purchased (I will never buy a name brand again!) was a crappy AST (no they don't exist anymore!) and the first system I built was a 386SX, followed by a K6 266 and then an Abit BP-6 (man $70/processor and there are 2). Now I run a dual Athalon setup (Yes I render stuff and cant work without multitasking). My older computing geek friends tell me of the 'days of yore' when your 'codeing tools' consisted of a hole punch and bristol board cut to the right size, analog computers, and the first IBM/Amdhal S360's that in thier old age required physical battery to operate properly.

Just a FYI - The ECS K7S5A is basically the same board.

Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
My PC has the following components :

• A OEM case
• A 235W OEM power supply
• ASUS P3B-F
• Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
• A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
• A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
• Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
• A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
• A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
• A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
• My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
• A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
• A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
• A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
• Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

Soon to be :

• A Adaptec 2940UW
• A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

I use my PC for :

• Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
• Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
• Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

• A silent as possible
• Accessible
• Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
• Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

To attain those goals I have to :

• Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
• Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
• Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

• http://www.formfactors.org/ You should be able to find all the documents regarding the ATX form factor and thermal design guides. A must if you want to build a quiet PC.
• http://developer.intel.com/ Intel has contributed a great deal to the ATX definition ; here you will find many relevant documents including thermal design guides for all Intel processors.
• Etract from my favorite's :
  
  

  Hardware\cases PC CASE
  Fong Kai
  PowerOn
  Enlight Corporation
  dir.yahoo Enclosures Manufacturers
  procase
  YY Computer
  Psi
  IN WIN
  Amtrade
  American Suntek
  Addtronics
  A-Top Technology, Inc
  Nikao
  Palo Alto Products
  Antec
  Lian-Li
  amaquest
  Koolance
  Quietpc
  PC Power & Cooling
  
  
  

  Hardware\Heat Sinks ALPHA
  Cooler Master
  AVC
  ekl
  GlobalWIN
  globefan
  RDJD
  Foxconn
  Spring Spread
  Sanyo Denki
  TITAN
  TaiSol
  ChipCoolers
  Orb a
  ElanVital
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Form Factor Platform Development Support
  SSI
  WTX
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Standards Fibre Channel Industry Association
  PCI SIG
  RAB
  serialata
  SPEC
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Storage RAID.edu
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Cours CS 252 - Graduate Computer Architecture
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info The PC Guide!
  Hardware Bible
  FullOn3D
  developer.intel.com
  HwB The Hardware Book
  United Overclockers
  Ars Technica
  Tech-Junkie
  HardwarePub
  Webopedia
  Illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware
  SysOpt
  2CPU
  Ace's Hardware
  Technical Support - RaidHelp v1.0 - Free RAID Technology Guide
  Computer Architecture
  OPENCORES.ORG
  TechFest
  MidWest Micro Support
  
  
  

  Hardware\Resalers GeekTek!
  Micro-Bytes
  ALCO
  ABC Micro
  2CoolTek
  Plycon Computers
  TCWO
  ABC Micro - Lprix
  Case Outlet
  The Chip Merchant, Inc
  Cimsys
  OrdiGros
  ALIENWARE
  SHENTECH
  FireStorm
  Hyper Microsystems
  TWEAKBOX
  
  
  

  Hardware\Reviews Tom's Hardware Guide
  Sharky Extreme
  StorageReview
  HardOCP
  AnandTech
  SystemLogic
  x-bit labs
  Active-Hardware
  FiringSquad
  SocketA
  Overclockers Australia
  HEXUS
  dansdata
  SysReview
  
  
  

  Hardware\Manufacturers AMD
  ASUS
  Belkin
  MassMultiples
  Promise
  StarTech
  VIA Technologies, Inc
  ABIT Computer Corp
  Comcase
  Micron Semiconductor
  ECS
  
  
  

  Hardware Freeboxen
  

Finally, someone who wants to put a PC in their living room, without it actually looking like a PC in their living room. Someone with taste has posted to Slashdot at last.

First, the Qbex isn't what you want. From that shot, it looks like a standard black NLX formfactor box. Which means it's got room for a slim CD/DVD, room for a couple HDs, room for a slim floppy, onboard everything, and usually one or two PCI slots in the back. That's it. No upgradeable AGP, and because of the formfactor, it still looks like a PC. Bleagh.

The Gateway Destination set-top unit is one of these, too.

Unfortunately, that's as close as you can come to a decent PC in a decent case, with much upgradeability at all. Rackmount cases are 19" wide, which is wider than some shelves or TVs, and usually also onboard everything, but they don't look back as set-top boxes, and 1U units can have a single PCI slot, and 2U units can have 2, maybe three?

Then there's "real" set-top boxes. Units like this offer a very non-threatening non-PC look, while still supporting a single PCI slot. Click on the "HTPC" link at the top of the page to see where Qbex probably gets their chassis from. :)

There's also a nice iDVD offering from GCT-Allwell with an integrated DVD player and PCI MPEG2 decoder... unfortunately it's not upgradeable at all, since the MPEG2 decoder takes up the only available PCI slot.

So in otherwords, you're pretty much stuck. I'd just LOVE to be proven wrong on this, but I think the only real choice you have is to have a chassis custom-built for you. Then get it FCC approved, and sell it online, and have a tidy little side business. ;)

--Vito