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Case-as-a-heatsink does exist, but you need a clever system of heat pipes to get the heat from where it is generated (CPU, GPU) to the case. If the motherboard is not an integral part of the package, you need to be even more clever to have adjustablity in the heat pipes to accommodate different CPU, GPU locations. It makes for difficult installs, hard to maintain, and such cases cost at least about $500 over standard case costs. Generally such cases only get used in hostile environments (where the air will damage the computer) or super-noise-sensitive environments, such as a recording studio.

Also, I agree with other commenters - many large fans is good, not bad, for quiet. You can get the needed airflow by running them very slowly.

(This knowledge comes from being a long-time reader of http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . I've never met such a case in real life.)

Examples of the first group include media PCs / DVRs, because you don't want loud CPU, case, and power supply fans in your living room,

To be fair, there are a lot of silent PC case/psu combinations out there. I have my MythTV system in an Antec NSK2400 with (something like) a Zalman CNPS8900 CPU cooler/fan and the whole thing is dead silent.

I spray painted the front silver bezel matte black and it looks like a high-end A/V unit - scroll down to photo on the Antec link. I installed a two-row CrystalFontz (blue back-light) LCD display in the top slot and the DVD drive in the bottom.

Came to say this. If you want a great build, include these:

An Asus Strix GTX 970
A Seasonic Platinum 1050w
A 120mm/140mm CPU cooler, at least a Hyper 212 Evo
A 4xxx Intel chip
A SSD
A case with lots of ventilation so you won't need extra fans. For maximum Wife Acceptance Factor, consider mini-ITX.

Noise? What noise? If your motherboard is willing to shut off your CPU fan at idle, you'll be at 0db (except for electrical noise). Even during heavy gaming the thing will barely make a whisper.

Need more help? SPCR has you covered.

Put quiet fans in. Noctua are the probably the best large fans - for use as CPU, PSU and case fans mostly, my Noctua fans have been going for many years now. I had a heatsink so big on my previous 95W quad core that it didn't even need a fan!

Video cards can also be adapted to take quiet fans but that's not always easy. Either replace the PSU fan or the PSU.

CPU and GPU fans thresholds can usually be altered to make them quieter when idling. (sometimes via the BIOS menu).

See sites like http://www.quietpc.com/ and http://www.silentpcreview.com/

silentpcreview.com is a web site dedicated to quiet and silent computing, with extensive reviews and forums. They have very recently posted a sample build of a quiet gaming PC.

You can take that as a base and adjust according to taste. (For example, I'm more obsessed by quiet and less by frames per second, so my gaming PC has a single GTX760Ti GPU.) If you have questions, take them to the forums.

Just choose your components with an eye for TDP and cooling needs (i.e. a passively cooled graphics card), and the only thing needed to do after that is selecting silent fans.

A silent CPU fan, a silent (possibly fanless) PSU, and a passive graphics card.

My computer is under 30 dB (I think), thanks to these guys.

http://silentpcreview.com/

One of the problems with Gigabyte's design is that they used an inadequate heatsink/fan, which not only causes the CPU/GPU to throttle, but also makes a great deal of irritating noise. They would have been better off going with a design similar to the Akasa Euler, where the whole exterior of the case is a giant heatsink and is connected to the die with heatpipes. In all likelihood they could have gotten passive cooling better than the crappy and noisy active solution they used. Of course, it would have cost a few bucks extra in bill of materials costs, plus added engineering expense.

Sounds like you already bought something, but I wonder if you know about the HP Microserver with AMD CPU? I have one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052

It's discontinued because there is a newer model with a faster Turion chip.

One 5.25" drive bay for your optical drive, four drive bays with easy-swap carriers (NOT hot-swap but I don't need hot-swap), lots of USB ports. Supports ECC RAM. I put the documented max of 8 GB of RAM in mine, and then read online that actually 16 GB of RAM will work even though 8 GB is documented as the max. (I haven't tested that so I cannot confirm it but it seems plausible.)

The system is cunningly designed. It's as small as it can be and still offer four 3.5" hard drive bays and a 5.25" optical drive bay. It has clever cable routing. It only needs one tool to fully disassemble, and they give you the tool snapped into a holder inside the box; just open the door to access it. (The tool is some sort of Torx screwdriver.)

It supports some kind of system management card but I don't know about such stuff. I got it just for running a handful of Linux virtual machines on software RAID.

An even older model reviewed at Silent PC Review. http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer

I'm planning to buy one more of these to use as a hot spare. If a hard drive goes bad, swap out the drive, boot up again, rebuild the RAID. If anything else goes bad, swap all cables to the hot spare chassis, move the drive carriers to the hot spare chassis, boot up again. Estimated down time less than 5 minutes, which is just fine for my home server needs.

There is also an HP microserver with an Intel CPU. It comes with a laptop optical drive built-in rather than a general purpose 5.25" empty bay. I'll stick with this.

A far better list of test results can be found at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ where they test the hell out of coolers and fans and other components. This POS "I No Nutink" Review is just slightly better then useless for those who actually "No Nutink".

A good anti-dust trick I recently learned from SPCR, is to put two case fans in the front, and none or one in the back. Create some over-pressure in the case, which keeps a lot of dust out.

I prefer http://www.silentpcreview.com/ when looking for quiet.

Nvidia cards bump their performance up full speed (max clock and memory speed) when more than one monitor is attached. Supposedly this is design. . Fortunately, a third-party hack is available so you can have multiple monitors without blowing your energy budget. Sadly, it currently only works with n5xx or lower cards (more recent cards apparently use different power states).

People don't want gaming rigs hooked up to their main screen, not unless they're a dweeb living on their own. Come back when a decent machine will sit next to the receiver and not look out of place, and is near silent when playing a modern game.

There are plenty of computer cases designed specifically to fit in with audiovisual equipment. The Silverstone Grandia GD07 and GD08 got decent ratings from Silent PC Review, and they can fit full-size graphics cards (up to 398 mm long, according to the review). As for the graphics card, Asus DirectCU models tend to work very well, maintaining good thermals without too much noise.

You can have a reasonably silent, powerful gaming PC that doesn't look out of place next to your TV right now, if you are willing to put some effort (and money) into the build rather than just throwing together the cheapest crap you can find on Newegg.

There's a really good graph at Silent PC Review with real measurements of power lost to heat:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/A_Better_Way_to_Compare_PSU_Efficiency

I don't work in a data center. But I think you might want to look at an HP Proliant MicroServer.

Basically it is an AMD laptop chipset on a tiny motherboard in a cunningly designed compact enclosure. The SATA drives go into carriers that are easily swapped (but not hot-swappable). It's quiet and power-efficient. It supports ECC memory (max 8GB) and supports virtualization.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009-5153252-5153253.html?dnr=1

Silent PC Review did a complete review of an older model (with a 1.3 GHz Turion instead of 1.5 GHz).

http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer

SRP is $350, but Newegg has it for $320 (limit 5 per customer).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052

Newegg also has 8GB of ECC RAM for about $55, so you can get one of these and max its RAM for under $400.

I just got one and haven't had time to really wring it out, but I did do the RAM upgrade. Despite the tiny enclosure, it wasn't too painful to work on it, and I was impressed by the design. The Turion dual-core processor has a passive heat sink on it, and the single large fan on the back pulls air through to cool everything. (There is also a tiny high-speed fan on the power supply.)

I'm going to use this as my personal mail server. It's cheap enough and small enough that I plan to have at least one put away as a hot spare; if the server dies, I'll power it down, move the hard drives to the spare, and I'll have the mail server back up within 5 minutes. Not bad for a cheap little box.

Well if that's no good, how about this: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Ninja2

This is what I use on my Athlon 2, works perfectly, is very quiet, and it's rather old now so you could probably pick a used one up pretty cheap.

Haven't they been saying that for a few decades now? Rotational media will be around for a long time to come, barring any real shattering breakthroughs in solid state media. Some markets, such as laptops and workstations which value speed over capacity, will likely transition to SSDs being the norm within the next 5 years or so, but when you need a lot of storage you'll still turn to hard drives for at least another decade or two. Given that hard drive technology is still having breakthroughs, it will be some time before SSDs can catch up in overall capacity, nevermind price per GB/TB.

SSDs have already surpassed hard drives in capacity, with 16TB being offered on a single SSD. SSDs are less than $1 a gigabyte. True, much more than hard drives, but 11 years ago when hard drives were $3 a gigabyte and 7 years ago hard drives were 50 cents/gb. Now hard drives are less than 1 cent a gigabyte, so how long do you think it will take SSDs to get there?

SSDs have the huge advantage that everyone wants them. Every device needs fast access and transfer rates with low power usage in as small a space as possible. More devices means more sales means lower prices as they ramp up production. I have a feeling that by the end of 2012 people won't even be considering a hard drive in a PC anymore, everyone will just buy SSDs.

Hard drives will never win the capacity war, not when they can currently put 64 gigabytes on a space smaller than your fingernail and that includes the memory controller and case.

you can buy a 20 or 24 bay case for around $300-$400 US, e.g. Norco RPC-4020 or RPC-4224. Takes up to a full size EEB 12"x13" motherboard and 20 or 24 3.5" hot-swap SAS/SATA drives. Can take a standard power supply or there are redundant dual power supplies available.

http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=1&modelno=RPC-4020
http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=1&modelno=RPC-4224

The 24 port version has a nice option to replace the internal fan bracket (which supports 4 x 80mm fans) with a bracket that supports 3 x 120mm fans. Much quieter for a home environment. Dunno if the RPC-4020 has a similar option. You *WILL* want to replace all of the supplied fans with third-party silent fans. http://www.silentpcreview.com/ is a good place to start researching this.

Even if you're only planning to have 10 or less drives right now, the extra bays are useful if/when you need to replace or upgrade existing drives. You won't have to juggle drives in and out of bays just to replace them. or have a drive hanging outside the case for a few hours while the data is copied.

For extra SATA ports, there are several models of LSI 9211 and similar HBA adaptors providing SAS/SATA 6Gpbs, PCI-e 8x slot. RRP is around $350 for 8 port models but you can find them cheaper on ebay, and several manufacturers (e.g. the IBM M1015) have significantly cheaper rebadged models. A SAS card allows you to use either or both SAS and SATA drives, and also allows you to use SAS expanders (to attach more drives to the one card - SATA has something similar called "port multipliers" but it's a crappy substitute only good for destroying your data). Unless you don't have enough PCI-e 8x slots in your m/b, though, you're better off just buying more 8 port cards.

They're just "dumb" HBAs offering only RAID-0, RAID-1, and JBOD....but that's exactly what you want for software raid or btrfs or ZFS so why pay extra for RAID-5 in the card that you're never going to use.

The LSI 1068 based cards are even cheaper, but they only support SAS/SATA 3Gbps. Doesn't matter much for current hard disks, but you'll need a few 6Gbps ports on the motherboard if you want to use SSD drives (e.g. for caching.)

here's a good starting point: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

see also http://forums.servethehome.com/showthread.php?19-LSI-RAID-Controller-HBA-Equivalency-Mapping

For the file system, I very strongly recommend ZFS On Linux (the native kernel implementation, not the ZFS-Fuse module). http://zfsonlinux.org/ - gives you raid-like features, disk/volume management, compression, de-duping, snapshots, ssd caching and more. all data is checksummed too so it can detect errors (and automatically repair them from redundant info on the RAID1/5-like volumes).

The Ubuntu PPA compiles easily on debian (you only have to change one dependancy from zfs-grub to grub in the debian/control file) - it's about 10 minutes work, and most of that is waiting for the packages to compile.

ZFS will give you software-raid like capabilities - superior equivs to RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-5/6 and combinations of them, plus multiple optional hot and cold spares. "superior" because the redundancy is on the file/data level, not at the block level, and each block of each file is checksummed. Plus you can use one or more fast devices like an SSD for automatic read caching of frequently access data (ZFS cache or L2ARC), and for a write-intent log (ZFS ZIL) for buffering random-writes to an SSD before writing them to the main drives. This ZIL eliminates the final advantage that hardware raid cards had

I would recommend the fanless (or the fanned versions) Seasonic PSUs. Totally fanless, 92% efficient, low ripple output.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/Seasonic_X-400_Fanless_PSU

There are some fanless ATOM and Fusion based mini-itx broads around with PCI-E slots around as well. SPCR has some good tips for making things quiet as well.

For a slightly more sane solution than rackmounting at home, consider the HP microserver.
Very low power (12W CPU), small, quiet, cheap, server grade, no Windows tax, holds four pluggable 3.5" drives plus optical (which some people swap for a 5th HDD for RAID5.)

http://blog.thestateofme.com/2011/05/14/review-hp-microserver/
http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=905262

If 8TB is full, you need to stop the obsessive collection of warez/pr0n/torrentz you are never likely to watch again.

For a home hub & router, the HP Microserver is pretty good: low-power AMD processor, 4 3.5" drive bays, gigabit ethernet, internal USB header and a very nice, small chassis. They are still selling in the UK for about £120 after cash back (hmm, pricier, $319 from newegg). Maybe that's a bit more than you wanted to spend but you can run a normal Linux distro.

for SSDs and other such OS independent stuff, i like http://www.silentpcreview.com/ Ony site that i have found with a load cell to test manufacturers claims on PSUs, including the efficiency ones, same goes for fans (both CFM and sound)

As for video cards, Assume that non-bleeding edge desktop cards from nvidia just work, as do intel "cards" but with poor performance. AMD/ATI cards may or may not work, and even if they do only sometimes with the right versions of the kernel, X, and catalyst.

Printers are at openprinting.org (if it is back up), but you could always just get an HP and expect it to work.

I use google to find newegg comments about hardware if i'm looking for something else. Gennerly if it works on ubuntu, i can have it working on gentoo without issue.

Exactly. It's not that hard to build a PC with only a few slow, quiet fans. Silent PC Review helped me out a lot 3.5 years ago.
I've got an Antec Solo case, Seasonic S380 (I think) PSU, passively cooled E8400 and HD3850, and I think a Nexus case fan. Two fans total (the PSU and the Nexus) do make some sound, but you only really hear it when the rest of the world is really, really quiet. And even then it's barely audible. If your game makes any kind of sound at all, you won't hear it.

And I'm sure than you can improve on my setup.

And their forums are an awesome resource.

I recently made a 'quiet-ish' gaming HTPC. It has all top-of-the-line hardware in a smaller form-factor case (antec nsk24800). I had to mod the case, the VGA card, and the heatsink to get everything fitting and decently cooled. Was it worth it? Probably not... but it makes the geek in me happy. My final build photos are here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=62147

Silent PC Review's articles, while not always about the latest hardware, are REALLY well written. They do lots of sound related testing (decibels up close, decibels from far away, etc), and often have lots of very detailed pictures. Their article is the primary reason I bought my Antec Mini P180 (which, granted, is likely not at ALL what the original poster wants).

To the original poster: Build a silent PC yourself, with the hardware necessary to meet the performance needs of your emulators. Large fans that spin slowly are your friend, as would be water cooling. Note that frequently the cost of doing this is noticeably more than "Buy a used XBox" or "Buy a Mac Mini", as you will end up buying parts that are of relatively high quality, and perhaps investing in something expensive like water cooling. Emulating things is likely a lot more processor intensive than watching HD movies, these days, as so many chipsets now support the movies in hardware, whereas emulation is often about CPU mojo.

Generally speaking, making sure that your case uses large heat sinks and large-diameter fans (which can throttle their speed) makes for a nearly-silent PC system. My Mini P180 probably meets your sound requirements, though I expect you want something in a smaller form factor.

Looking at their site, you might like some of these articles. For the older ones, which are from nine months ago, you can likely use the same case/fans/PSU and drop in a similarly priced newer-generation motherboard and processor pairing and get similar results.

Fanless i5 (£1223): http://www.silentpcreview.com/aleutia-h3r
- Basically, an i5 system in a small form factor box which is effectively a giant heat sink. They don't recommend it for a media pc but it looks like it'd have plenty of mojo for emulation. (I assume, as I haven't done any emulation of recent systems ever.)

Mid-level gaming build ($1000): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Mid_Gaming_PC
- Tower form factor. You probably want something smaller.
- Note the Really Large heat sink on the CPU, and the very large fan on that. It's worth it.

Small Form Factor gaming rig ($1000 to $1200): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Gaming_System_Build_Guide
- Another i5 system, with aftermarket cooling accessories for the video card and so on.
- Stays cool and relatively quiet at a 1 meter distance even under sustained heavy load (Crysis).
- This is probably the one most like what you want.

Silent PC Review's articles, while not always about the latest hardware, are REALLY well written. They do lots of sound related testing (decibels up close, decibels from far away, etc), and often have lots of very detailed pictures. Their article is the primary reason I bought my Antec Mini P180 (which, granted, is likely not at ALL what the original poster wants).

To the original poster: Build a silent PC yourself, with the hardware necessary to meet the performance needs of your emulators. Large fans that spin slowly are your friend, as would be water cooling. Note that frequently the cost of doing this is noticeably more than "Buy a used XBox" or "Buy a Mac Mini", as you will end up buying parts that are of relatively high quality, and perhaps investing in something expensive like water cooling. Emulating things is likely a lot more processor intensive than watching HD movies, these days, as so many chipsets now support the movies in hardware, whereas emulation is often about CPU mojo.

Generally speaking, making sure that your case uses large heat sinks and large-diameter fans (which can throttle their speed) makes for a nearly-silent PC system. My Mini P180 probably meets your sound requirements, though I expect you want something in a smaller form factor.

Looking at their site, you might like some of these articles. For the older ones, which are from nine months ago, you can likely use the same case/fans/PSU and drop in a similarly priced newer-generation motherboard and processor pairing and get similar results.

Fanless i5 (£1223): http://www.silentpcreview.com/aleutia-h3r
- Basically, an i5 system in a small form factor box which is effectively a giant heat sink. They don't recommend it for a media pc but it looks like it'd have plenty of mojo for emulation. (I assume, as I haven't done any emulation of recent systems ever.)

Mid-level gaming build ($1000): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Mid_Gaming_PC
- Tower form factor. You probably want something smaller.
- Note the Really Large heat sink on the CPU, and the very large fan on that. It's worth it.

Small Form Factor gaming rig ($1000 to $1200): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Gaming_System_Build_Guide
- Another i5 system, with aftermarket cooling accessories for the video card and so on.
- Stays cool and relatively quiet at a 1 meter distance even under sustained heavy load (Crysis).
- This is probably the one most like what you want.

Silent PC Review's articles, while not always about the latest hardware, are REALLY well written. They do lots of sound related testing (decibels up close, decibels from far away, etc), and often have lots of very detailed pictures. Their article is the primary reason I bought my Antec Mini P180 (which, granted, is likely not at ALL what the original poster wants).

To the original poster: Build a silent PC yourself, with the hardware necessary to meet the performance needs of your emulators. Large fans that spin slowly are your friend, as would be water cooling. Note that frequently the cost of doing this is noticeably more than "Buy a used XBox" or "Buy a Mac Mini", as you will end up buying parts that are of relatively high quality, and perhaps investing in something expensive like water cooling. Emulating things is likely a lot more processor intensive than watching HD movies, these days, as so many chipsets now support the movies in hardware, whereas emulation is often about CPU mojo.

Generally speaking, making sure that your case uses large heat sinks and large-diameter fans (which can throttle their speed) makes for a nearly-silent PC system. My Mini P180 probably meets your sound requirements, though I expect you want something in a smaller form factor.

Looking at their site, you might like some of these articles. For the older ones, which are from nine months ago, you can likely use the same case/fans/PSU and drop in a similarly priced newer-generation motherboard and processor pairing and get similar results.

Fanless i5 (£1223): http://www.silentpcreview.com/aleutia-h3r
- Basically, an i5 system in a small form factor box which is effectively a giant heat sink. They don't recommend it for a media pc but it looks like it'd have plenty of mojo for emulation. (I assume, as I haven't done any emulation of recent systems ever.)

Mid-level gaming build ($1000): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Mid_Gaming_PC
- Tower form factor. You probably want something smaller.
- Note the Really Large heat sink on the CPU, and the very large fan on that. It's worth it.

Small Form Factor gaming rig ($1000 to $1200): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Gaming_System_Build_Guide
- Another i5 system, with aftermarket cooling accessories for the video card and so on.
- Stays cool and relatively quiet at a 1 meter distance even under sustained heavy load (Crysis).
- This is probably the one most like what you want.

Wow that is a very nice price for a silently cooled cpu+mobo - I might need to order one.

Just wanted to add that for a PSU in this system you would definitely want to go with a picoPSU.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

Or a complete solution from Zotac for330 USD:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21556

I agree that they are good enough to work okay for most people. But I don't see the big issue with buying a HSF if it's not bundled. Either way, you're paying for one.

And it's not just relevant for overclocking. Heat sink performance is usefully measured in terms of the amount of airflow required to keep level temperatures under load. If you're overclocking, you can get a higher overclock without using a more noisy fan. I'm not overclocking, but I like being able to run the fan at less than 1000 rpm, which is fairly quiet. (Also, I don't think the stock HSF would have fit in my case.)

Now, how do you identify a good PSU?

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article986-page6.html

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=169

Yes, Zotac ION boards do it exceptionally well according to pretty much every review I've read. I'm going to build a HTPC based on one of these.

The same techniques that silent PC nerds use to isolate their hard drive to keep it quiet would of course help reduce vibrations (I mean, that's the point). There is the thread detailing the techniques used to suspend/isolate HDD's at http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8240/.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article272-page4.html

There are a multitude of aftermarket CPU coolers which are much quieter than the stock ones from Intel or AMD. Some chips can even be run passive with the right heatsink. Take a look at the reviews on http://www.silentpcreview.com/

You do know that AMD's TDP and Intel's TDP numbers are not directly comparable, don't you? They don't report the same thing. For example, look here.

A VIA Epia EN12000E only uses 17W idle, 24W max, it's not too bad. Only 1GB of Ram and 2 SATA, though.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article609-page1.html

Just find a reputable computer seller and order a machine that fits your budget. It'll probably run whatever you need it to run. If Oblivion is the heaviest game you're going to run, you can be done for about $500 probably.

If you don't want the same boring standard machine that everybody else has, then you'll have to do some research. I did that 2 years ago. My main resource was Silent PC Review because I was tired of my old jet-engine-soundalike. AnandTech is also a good source, as is Tweakers, if you happen to be Dutch. Lots of articles on those sites will refer to Tom's Hardware, which does benchmark graphs, but really, just get what everybody's recommending.

Two years ago, I went with:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (brand new at the time, very fast, very low power usage, therefore little heat) with a passive Scythe Ninja cooler,
• ATI HD3850 (new, powerful, not overly expensive, good for all games expect Crysis, low power usage when not doing 3D stuff) from Peak (cheaper than other HD3850s because they had a badly fitted cooler which I was going to replace anyway) with passive Accelero S1 cooler (very effective passive cooler, and very cheap).
• Seasonic S12II-380 power supply (SeaSonic has the quietest PSUs, and 380 W is more than enough for a modern PC that doesn't try to waste as much power as possible),
• Antec Solo case (Antec makes the quietest cases, but stay away from their power supplies)
• Some new Samsung harddisk that everybody else was using too.
• Some Gigabyte motherboard with P35 chipset, which was what you needed two years ago

All of this cost me about EUR 1000. Very happy with it. Dead quiet, too. Mind you, this is from 2 years ago. There's probably better, cheaper, quieter, faster stuff around now, but I'm not keeping up.

As for the dual core/quad core stuff: how many heavy CPU-using applications will you be running at the same time? Will your heaviest applications be able to make efficient use of multiple cores? If you don't know, go with dual core. One for the main app, one for everything else. No need to have to extra cores that are only idling all the time.

I expect a netbook to be more expensive than a bare motherboard+CPU, there are batteries,PSU, screen, disk/ssd, ram, charging circuit etc...., all built in, and all of which cost extra. I don't expect to find a netbook that cheap

I grant you that. I just thought you implied you could get netbooks that cheap, but not the bare hardware.

That Atom motherboard sounds good, but what is it's power draw like? I heard that it's chipset draws loads of power. Would it really provide a benefit to a PIII motherboard? How does it compare?

To be frank. I do not know. I still have one P-III server running at my parents and we never measured the power draw. A quick Google gave me a review for the linked Atom board reporting 45W for the whole system. Most likely the Atom will be more powerful than a P-III system, but I won't really vouch for it. As said, I have an Atom 330 ION board, but under Ubuntu it performed horribly. I still need to try Windows XP to see if it's due to the software (drivers) or the hardware. Power draw seems better too.

Anyway, you might want to look around on this site a bit. I've never bought anything on it because the shipping cost are not in my favour. Since you're talking about pounds, it might be interesting for you.

I picked £100 because that is 3 times the cost of the current motherboard (were I to buy a PIII board+CPU new from storage stock) at my local.

Why would anyone do that? Take any cheap chip/motherboard combo and underclock the hell out of it. I did that with an AMD64 chip taken from a dumpster. Underclocked it to the lowest I could and the fan could be removed. Instant fanless system.

I expect a netbook to be more expensive than a bare motherboard+CPU, there are batteries,PSU, screen, disk/ssd, ram, charging circuit etc...., all built in, and all of which cost extra. I don't expect to find a netbook that cheap

I grant you that. I just thought you implied you could get netbooks that cheap, but not the bare hardware.

That Atom motherboard sounds good, but what is it's power draw like? I heard that it's chipset draws loads of power. Would it really provide a benefit to a PIII motherboard? How does it compare?

To be frank. I do not know. I still have one P-III server running at my parents and we never measured the power draw. A quick Google gave me a review for the linked Atom board reporting 45W for the whole system. Most likely the Atom will be more powerful than a P-III system, but I won't really vouch for it. As said, I have an Atom 330 ION board, but under Ubuntu it performed horribly. I still need to try Windows XP to see if it's due to the software (drivers) or the hardware. Power draw seems better too.

Anyway, you might want to look around on this site a bit. I've never bought anything on it because the shipping cost are not in my favour. Since you're talking about pounds, it might be interesting for you.

I picked £100 because that is 3 times the cost of the current motherboard (were I to buy a PIII board+CPU new from storage stock) at my local.

Why would anyone do that? Take any cheap chip/motherboard combo and underclock the hell out of it. I did that with an AMD64 chip taken from a dumpster. Underclocked it to the lowest I could and the fan could be removed. Instant fanless system.

There's a review at:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/asus-ul80vt

They got a runtime of 9hrs 11min while web browsing, but it was running faster than expected so they thought that 10 hrs wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

who on earth would browse the web for 9 hours?

There's a review at:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/asus-ul80vt

They got a runtime of 9hrs 11min while web browsing, but it was running faster than expected so they thought that 10 hrs wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

I just saw this reviewed on SPCR: Intel finally released a MiniITX motherboard with an Atom processor and and a mobile 945 chipset! Even with a 2.5" hard drive, idle power is less than 10w, and peak power is around 16w.

The board features Gigabit Ethernet, and if you need 2 NICs there is a PCI slot and a MiniPCIe. Performance should be plenty for anything server-related (2 SATA), and if you need more drives you can add them via USB.

This looks perfect for you: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Intel_D945GSEJT_with_Morex_T1610

Around 12W idle, 16W peak - small, cheap, efficient and simple.

Intel just released the D945GSEJT Atom board. This is not the same boards that used to older 945 chipsets. The older boards needed a fan on the chipset for it sucked up almost 20 watts!! The new board is mini-itx so it should fit in just about any case and runs on a single 12 volt coaxial plug so no need for a buly ATX PSU.

A nice review here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Intel_D945GSEJT_with_Morex_T1610

I also use, and am a big fan of the PC Engines Alix boards: http://www.pcengines.ch/ You have several board styles to choose from. You can install Voyage Linux (Debian based and keep APT!!) on a compact flash with a simple installation (specifically for ALIX) script: http://linux.voyage.hk/

My alix, which I use as a USB music server, draws a measly 3 watts (Kill-A-Watt meter) when playing FLAC files. You can attach a low power USB hard disk for added storage if you want to run NFS.

Most modern motherboards have a voltage sensor expressed to the user, and you can read the voltages and graph them over time to find transient failures like that. But as you might imagine, giving a really good test to a power supply is non-trivial. The best thing is still to have one on hand to swap in, if you suspect transient power supply problems.

Other than that, the only best thing to have is a PCI POST card. But that won't help you with transient problems either, as you surely know :)

Power usage:

This guy on the silent pc forums seems to indicate he saved probably 2w, possibly 5w of power by removing his RAGE XL card. -- This is admittedly an older card -- but even if it's 5w -- at 24x7 we're looking at less than $6 per year at 12c / kwh.

Link: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=453510&sid=c07f21d546ad78002ce04fee65b0e989

Zalman put out such a case a while back. For your basic ATX cases, it is fairly impractical because you need a mechanism for dealing with slighly varying dimensions between different motherboards and CPUs and things(and most heatpipes don't take kindly to bending). In that case, it also made the case monstrous and heavy. It would have been much easier and cheaper, and almost as quiet, to just have a couple of huge, slow turning fans cooling things.

In purpose built enclosures, for laptops and mini PCs and things, it is routine for the case to be used as a heat sink, possibly obviating the need for a fan, possibly just reducing it.

Man, 120W at idle is horrible :(

Drop by at SPCR forums - I've been lurking there for a while and I've learned an incredible lot. They have people building sub-30W HTPC machines, and idling at over 100W is practically considered a sin. Using as many fans as you do will probably get you burned at the stake, though ;)

The best places to check are:

http://www.endpcnoise.com/
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
http://www.acousticpc.com/
According to this, 3d support for r6xx and r7xx ATI cards (currently, everything numbered HD 2000 and up) is finally coming out.

Here is one card for $70 that meets your criteria if the 3D support above is really there.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/powercolor-hd4650