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Build Your Own Mini-Computer
Bored in Chattanooga writes: "Tom's is running an article reviewing a Shuttle mini-computer. Seems to have everything the average computer user would need, minus a nice 3D graphics card. Perhaps the standard large ATX-size computer cases will cease to exist and be replaced by these "mini-computers." I find these gems cuter than any iMac I've ever seen!"
Bought one. Works great for browsing, running Morpheus. Didn't read Tom's article. Did he mention you can have 3 ATA100 devices? Use the floppy slot for another disk. Yes you can use standard cables, yes the power supply has enough watts to do this. Sound is good for MP3 quality, graphics suck, go buy a PCI card and use that one slot, such as a 64 meg MX400 which does the trick for me as it has the TV out. Don't ask it to copy 10 gigs while your watching a DVD and you'll do fine. Add a 300 watt inverter, wireless keyboard, touch pad and small lcd and throw the whole thing in the car. Add GPS, cell phone to match your needs. Now go buy one. I want more cases like this. The cappacino PC almost made my list but lacks that important ingredient, versitility, which this has.
Soldam also has something similar. Pandora
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
I've got one of these at work to make an X-terminal out of. It comes with three fans, a 60x10mm fan on the short heatsink that sounds like a jet engine, a rather noisy 60x25mm fan as the case exhaust, and a tiny 25mm fan in the power supply. Even without a hard drive, it's a very noisy machine.
In order to quiet it down, I got a low power VIA C6 CPU for it, the 800Mhz samuel2 1.6V model. I couldn't find the C3 ezra 1.3V cpu for sale anywhere at the time. The small heatsink wasn't enough to cool the chip without the fan. I've ordered the Alpha PAL6035 heatsink to see if that will cool the C3 ok without a fan. There isn't much space in the case to put a large heatsink in. The intel OEM PIII heatsink is too wide, so is the Alpha PAL8045 and Thermalright SK6. The Swiftech MCX370 should fit, and I think the Zalman heatsinks can fit if you cut and bend some of the fins and don't have a harddrive.
Akihabara if full of those small "pizza box" type barebones.
... OLD news, and I believe it's been on Slashdot before ....
As for this "minicomputer"
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
The article is by tomshardware, sure it says build your own machine, because most if not all of the readers of tomshardware build their own machines. But I also the that these case has really chance to enter the "aunt, uncles and newbie" market. Barebones are really great for small computer stores. Just add a CPU, some ram and a harddisk and you can sell a complete computer. Sure that wouldn't be as successfull as selling it at fry's, but it would be a start and I think the sv24 is already clear success for shuttle.
Also you ask if geeks would buy that barebone. You said they wouldn't buy it because it is too slow and not upgradeable. I think you forgot something here, sure geeks wouldn't buy it as their main working machine but it is a really good case for every geek that wants to build a small pc for a special purpose like a small fileserver or a mp3 player, or just a pc to surf the web in the living room.
I think this is a great computer for both the newbie and the geek.
Jan
...so I bought this and that. Not as geeky as the shuttle thingie, not as fast as the bleeding edge, but a tad cheaper... Most important: Everything is supported under Linux, hehe.
Use The Source, Luke!
The problem with your argument about cubic feet and flow rate is in the basics of fluid flows. Given a presure on a fluid in a duct/pipe/whatever, the flow rate goes up with the fourth power of the diameter! This is why, as you correctly pointed out, fans don't scale down well, and thus a bigger fan is much better.
However, when you get small cases, you get small spaces for air to move through, and thus reduced flowrates regardless of fan size. The CFM rating on a fan assumes no significant load on the fan. The types of fans used in pc cooling cannot handle large resistance to flow; their cfm will drop like a rock.
Blowers (the things with a rotating circular mouse cage thing) do a lot better, but are noisier and don't move air nearly as fast in the first place.
-Cheetah
The case, power-supply and motherboard is also available from AMS, the company that makes the case: http://www.american-media.com/index-CF7989.html
James
Mount one of these bitches on there (whee, Svideo), hack up a custom battery and you have one *hell* of a quake2 mobile rig.
:D
(Good for trash-talking bastards:) "Man, I'm the fucking best DM'er ever! My sk1llz are t3h best, rar!"
'umm, right, so, ok. Here's my box [*grunt*] Bring it'
Screw you guys with your fancy-ass video cards, poor people *tweak* baby! I had a P200(nonMMX) with a Savage4 and I got it to play UT.
I currently run a G400(guh) and I run Counterstrike in OpenGL 800x600x32 at a consistent 70fps, it spikes to 99+
So when is the shipping company getting off it's ass to bring me mine?
--- Do you believe in the day?
That's a Book PC. You can still find them at several places on the 'net. They really are good little boxes.
load "linux",8,1