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New Small Form Factor PC Reviewed
Beau Mundt writes "You guys haven't touched on the small form factor PCs in a while, thought you
would be interested in this
review of a Lex System SFF PC. Its arguably the tiniest PC around and could
be used for many cool things like a Linux gateway, a wireless workstation, or
just a silent small foot print system. The other neat thing is the reviewer
stuffs a P3 1.26 and a Radeon 7500 into the system. Perfect for bringing to LANs!"
In the example of a Linux gateway or wireless workstation, there is a better solution. Buy a 1U rack mount case (they can be had for under $150 with a 300w power supply). They accept standard ATX motherboards and many have removable drives.
With this method, you can use any off-the-shelf parts to repair the system.
This is the method I use for a webserver and Linux firewall. I have both mounted (among other things) in a old telecom cabinet. Works like a charm.
Are you sure? I saw many negative points:
"The biggest sacrifice is the use of a 2.5" laptop hard drive. In our particular unit it was an IBM drive spinning at 4500rpm. The use of 2.5" drives keeps the heat, noise and size down however at the same time it also raises the costs and hurts performance."
"One problem with this particular setup is a non back panel case design. Meaning that the case is designed for this particular motherboard (and the two others Lex makes) and those boards only."
"From the looks of the above picture, it looks as if a 3.5" hard drive could be mounted. Unfortuately however, underneath the 2.5" drive is the internal connections for the external power supply."
"In our tests of the PCI riser we ran into a few issues."
"Depending on where you buy, you will likely have to buy a 2.5" hard drive and a slim line CD rom drive. These can be annoying additional costs on hard to come by parts."
The reviewer showed the benefits and limitations equally.
Shuttle SS40
Gigabyte G-MAX Series
The Good: CD-Rom Drive
The Bad: Price ($200 USD)
Research "As mentioned above, the Lex Thin-800E is the smallest case we have ever looked at." Here is one for the author to look at that is smaller than the one they reviewed: http://www.caseoutlet.com/NWPc/Sumi/Sumi.html
Just for interest's sake, I took a look at the site. It says that the dimensions of this thing are 6.2cm x 27.2 cm x 25.2 cm.
Now, if you look at the Cappuccino TX-3, you see that it has dimensions 5.63 cm x 14.38 cm x 15 cm. That seems quite a bit smaller to me. So, I would find the claim that this is the tiniest PC around arguable indeed.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
The BriQ
http://www.totalimpact.com/briQ.html
ThinkGeek has a tiny little thing, no bigger footprint than the CD/DVD drive. Still holds a P3 1.2, 30Gb HD, 512Mb RAM http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/5a98.shtm l
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
You and me both.
Well, in my case it's a Sony HDTV-ready set (though still 4:3 'cause there's so little 16:9 HD stuff broadcast), I have wired the whole house with 2xCat5e and 2xRG6/U, and I too want a central media server, though for movies as well as music (I have about 160 GB of the latter, unompressed). Yes, I have the obligatory DirectTV system with 18"x24" dish and twin dual LNBs, 5x8 multiswitch at the headend, and a terrestrial HD/SD/analog antenna.
I've looked at GCT Allwell's iDVD3036 for a local quiet thin client for an application similar to yours, but there are a few problems, not the least of which is the poor GNU/Linux support for the Sigma Designs em8400 H/W MPEG2 decoder and CyberPro 5005 graphics chip. A proprietary library for the em8400 is available, as well as proprietary X drivers for the CyberPro, but the latter doesn't handle digital overlays and alphablending very well. Register-level documentation is available for both chips, but I lack sufficient video graphics card architecture knowledge to make much sense of it without some kind of tutorial context. About the only nice thing about that combo is the use of digital CCIR601 overlay ports on the CyberPro for the output of the em8400 (and a TV tuner) -- this avoids loss of sharpness due to a more common analog overlay.
Now, what makes this system interesting, is the use of more standard video and the availabiliy of a PCI slot: one could drop a Sigma Designs Netstream 2k in there, and analog overlay the X output. You also get stock composite, svideo, and component outputs from the em8400 directly, so, using multiple inputs on the TV, and an SVGA to svideo converter, go between displaying an X display with a scaled PIP live video image and a full-screen video image, with better resolution (or just get a TV with SVGA-in).
Of course, replacing the slim-line CD drive with a DVD drive, and swapping out the HDD for a DOC would probably be called for.
This leaves the issue of streaming data to the box: does it sport on-board 100 Mb/s ethernet?
You could've hired me.
Er, a good modular crimping tool (i.e. Greenlee) will set you back US$50 alone, as will a 110/66 block punch-down tool (for the headend). A spare blade for the punch (they usually include a 110 or 1 66 but not both, and Murphy says they'll come with a 66 when you want a 110), is around US$15.
When I installed faceplates and connectors (Cat5, RJ14, 2xRG6/U), it came to about $20 a plate -- I installed 8. Headend stuff was about $20 for 110 blocks, and modular panels (each, not total). Figure $75 for Leviton wall-mount enclosures. I went through 2000 feet of Cat5e ($200) and RG6/U ($200) cable.
Don't get discouraged, but do realize that you should probably look at US$1000 to do things on the cheap (and that does not include the cost of a router/firewall, satellite multiswitch, RF-amps, etc.)
You could've hired me.
Finally I find the proper response to all this down the list. Really now, if you want a mini-pc this is the best way to go. Shuttle put enough of these out that the parts needn't be considered completely proprietary. With standard 3.5" drive bays you can put a real hard drive in there as well. Sucker has onboard EVERYTHING too. You can check out more at Tom's http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/02q3/020815/ind ex.html
Ability do in full size PCI and AGP cards without risers too. And if you want to keep it on the cheap you can even throw a 1.7Ghz Celery processor in there and you can quit your bitchin about cost. Don't forget how quiet it is too due to the heatpipe used on the CPU.
The VIA EPIA has built in S-Video out. It's a mini-ITX (much smaller than microATX) motherboard and VIA C3 500MHz or 800MHz, with everything you can think of included.
The 500 is fanless, the 800 has a small fan. I put in a Zalman Fanmate to slow down the fan on my 800 and it's silent.
I got the 800 from idot.com for a little over $100 (remember, that's including motherboard, CPU, integrated video, composite/S-video out, sound, networking, USB).
As far as small, silent, and cheap SFF's go today, this is Where It's At.
http://www.viavpsd.com
http://www.mini-itx.com