Stealth Computers: NY Times on Mini ITX Modding

securitas writes "What's smaller than a breadbox? Or a toaster? Or a teddy bear? The New York Times has just discovered mini-ITX based computers (Google /CNET mirror, minus the pictures). It's a nice overview of the mini-ITX scene and suggests that small form computers are a hot growth area while the traditional PC business languishes."

Comments

Recommended disk: Seagate Barracuda V

[Kjella]

120GB disk

Just any 120GB disk can be quite noisy.. here's a couple alternatives from storagereview.com's database:

Seagate Barracuda ATA V (120 GB ATA-100) - 37.8 Db
IBM Deskstar 120GXP (120 GB ATA-100) - 45.8 Db
Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB (120 GB ATA-100) - 47.3 Db

Decibel is a logarithmic scale unless you know, so this is a *lot*. Since the disk will be the noisyest part of the system, I'd definately go for a Seagate

Component Failure

[Ken Treis]

I've owned about 7 mini-ITX boxes, and 3 of them have had motherboard flaws when I unpacked them (2 had bad network ports, and one had no USB). Another one worked for a month or so before the network port went bad. Still another only boots about 2 out of every three times I push the power button on. I end up having to use the one PCI slot for an extra network card just to get the network to work. Has anyone else experienced issues like this?

I am not one to give up easily on something like this. The form factor and lower power consumption of these boards is very cool. But I've given up on Via's EPIA and EPIA-M.

Instead of the EPIA platform, I'm now deploying servers based on the Total Impact BriQ. And I'm much happier. I didn't need Firewire, USB (except for keyboard, and the BriQ has a serial port instead), or fancy graphics (BriQ has none, unless you count the VFD, heh). But they make slick servers.

And they run Debian/PPC nicely, but you have to use a network install to get it software on there.