Slashdot Mirror
Small Form Factor Comparison Matrix
Giggles Of Doom writes "With small form factor PCs, such as the Shuttle XPC line, becoming all the rage these days for office and gamer use, it can be a daunting task to find the model that is right for you. With more and more manufacturers getting on the SFF bandwagon, the selection is growing rapidly. How do you compare each one? You could spend hours combing manufacturer sites and reviews, or you could be thankful that someone has done all the work for you already! The Small Form Factor Comparison Matrix is just that, a chart listing over 30 of the most popular SFF boxes, their features, and price. Sort by any field, and limit your search to things like "Pentium 4 Only" or "Under $200 Only." If you're looking into getting a SFF box, this is the place to start." (Sudhian Media and mini-itx.com are also good sources for information on small PCs.)
Cache is here: http://tinyurl.com/z74a
Does anyone know of a small dual-CPU capable motherboard?
Something like a micro-ATX form factor but with multiple CPU's would be great.
Hey Shuttle, how about a flex-ATX system with dual Xeons, Opterons, or similar?
small form factor will raise the importance of un highly undervaluated aspect: noise
when you sit just beside your pc you soon start striving for finding a noiseless pc (that mostly mean a fanless pc)
There's no column for noise. I know some people who have Shuttle XPCs. Whenever I see them I think "Wow, how cute and practical!" Then they turn it on. WHOOOOOOOOOSH like a jet turbine.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
The IDEQ has nicely situation USB ports (2 in the front, and 2 or more in the rear - I don't even remember, more than I need). SP/DIF optical audio out, firewire out, again ports in front and rear. Everything you need is integrated, ethernet, pretty decent audio, even dual head-capable GeForce 4MX (I have an AGP GeForce4 Ti4200 card in here myself, since I do some real 3D work, and some gaming).
It's worth giving a thought to. Will you really miss all that other stuff? If you live in a city apartment where your floor space costs hundreds of dollars a square foot like I do, and your desk size is limited by your small apartment, going SFF is definitely worth consideration. If you have a big house, lotsa room, or need to swap in and out hard drives and are the kinda person who leaves your case open for easy access, then it's probably the wrong move, since it's quite crowded in a little SFF case.
I thank the site for their good work.
My future SFF will go in a den where I want to keep the noise level down. Too bad there isn't a sound rating on these boxes. I do hear the shuttles are pretty quiet if you use a quiet HD and video card.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
is small form factor. Yet the whole chart gives no indication of size. Just features. If one is to say, find the smallest case, one must click on the detail matrix to drill down. A timely task At least replace one category for a one look size comparison, perhaps the number of floppy bays can go, as this is down on my list of 'must have' case design.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Here are other sites offering Small Form Factor listings:
SSF at HardwareCentral.
Shuttle PCs at PCs For Everyone.
And just in case you don't know, here this guy explains what a Small Form Factor PC is.
"With small form factor PCs, such as the Shuttle XPC line, becoming all the rage these days for office and gamer use"
I got to LAN parties, work in IT, and I don't see anyone looking for smaller form fctors for gaming.
Bringing a full size ATX tower to a LAN party just ins't that hard. Maybe if you're trying to take it on an airplane I could see the need. But otherwise, with all the heat and the size of video cards, I don't see small form factor being the rage in gaming. In fact I see the opposite. People wanting lots of room in their case.
I dont go to big name contests or national LAN parties, so maybe I've just lost touch.
The Matrix shows a number for USB ports, but it needs to break down which devices have USB 1.1 and which have USB 2. This is extremely important, since you're not likely to have the space to add a USB 2 card.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Anyone know much of the non x86 small machines or boards? I know of pegasosppc and their micro-ATX boards, and an upcoming (hopefully) AmigaOne that's a full G3 or G4 Mini-ITX board, and rumours of ARM Mini-ITX.
Any PPC Mini-ITX boards that won't be lumbered with Amiga licensing fees?
All those boxes I've seen lately are just like the original(?) Shuttle cube. I don't call this a big selection, even if the innards are different. :-P)
I'm still looking for something in the form of a slim rectangle (think of the shape, and colour, of the monolith from 2001).
With mini-itx and slimline dvd players that should be possible.
(and yes, I can't build it myself.
home
Seems someone has not been doing their homework properly. Can't be an accurate matrix with products missing :(
For those who are curious curious.
OpenBrick Website
Rooster - A friend. "Anyone's friend in particular or just generally well disposed to people?"
To be really useful, this matrix needs a lot of additional information. I was looking a a small form factor case at tiger a couple of weeks ago, and there were a number of suprises you wouldn't realize just by looking at a chart. For example, while the tiger box has a PCI slot and an AGP slot, the positions were reversed. That maters, if you had intended to use a Nvidia card with the fan that takes up the PCI space (wouldn't work in this space). However, the tiger box did have an option (availability unknown) for a printer port connector, which is not mentioned here. And while everyone seems to be doing 6 channel audio (I find that hard to believe for these small boxes) I would like to know if any have game connectors, which have a serial connector, if the keyboard and mouse must be USB, and if any have a DVI connector for a LCD or if all just use an old VGA connector.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=264
i have one.
The hard drive (Maxtor 4G160J8) is louder than the PC. And you can barely hear the hard drive.
The heatpipe, massive heatsink, and temperature controlled fan help a lot.
It WHOOOOOSHes for about 3 seconds when you power it on, as the hardware is initialized. Then it goes totally and completely silent as linux boots, and stays silent during heavy use.
Shrug.
They seem to solve a lot of problems that conventional systems are plagued with. Cooling a large box, noise generated by the cooling systems, space used by the server sitting under your desk. I was originally looking at rack mount systems but these Small Form Factor PC's have the added advantage of portability. Perfect for LAN Parties.
In addition they retain standard PC components, so you are not thrust into the expensive world of laptop computing. I did that for a while and got tired of paying double for everything.
Howver, currently I have the server under the desk. The major problem is the storage space of these boxes but if I can find an external storage system that suits, I am definitely going small form factor.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I find it somewhat strange that a page about Small Form Factor PCs has no information on the DIMENSIONS!
the older sv24 was indeed like a 747 on approach.
i have an SB51G that is very quiet, and i recently
got an SB65G2 that is also very quiet, altho i haven't had it fired up much, yet.
the heat-pipe tech thing uses a single fan for the
case and CPU, and seems to work rather well, at
least for me.
i have been very happy with them and would recommend
them.
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
There are ways to cut down noise without relying solely on passive or liquid cooling. Lots of low noise PSs and fans are available (and not that expensive). Even replacing a worn/cheap cpu fan can make a lot of difference. Unfortunately, case and system vendors mostly don't pay much attention to these details, so you pretty much have to retrofit.
You're close, I'm 25. And oddly enough they aren't just giving me bandwidth for free. But if you want to use the site to save yourself time choosing a box, then consider that time savings to be worthless, feel free not to donate. If, on the other hand, it helps you find a box you like with minimal fuss and hassle and are feeling generous, feel free to chip in a buck for hosting costs, pizza costs, etc.
Plus, I felt the donation system would be a lot nicer then ads.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
An error occured while loading http://sff.redlightning.net/:
Timeout on server
Connection was to sff.redlightning.net at port 80
Must be a matrix of 0,0 then.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
So which model SFF PC is their server? ;-)
Karma: Excellent (In Soviet Russia, karma pimps YOU)
"Silent" would mean no noise. A PC can be silent when the hard disk is spun down and all of its fans are stopped and nothing else in it is making any noise. You probably just meant "quiet."
I remember being in a terminal room at usenix many years ago which was full of Network Computing Devices X terminals, which were silent (diskless, fanless, no other parts moving or otherwise making sound). It was like being in a library. By far, the loudest remaining sound was the keystrokes from everyone typing.
I like silent (as opposed to quiet), PC's, although I've only used them in practice as thin clients.
When I see a vendor using the term "silent" to refer to a PC that is merely quiet, I consider that vendor to be a liar, and I generally can't trust them enough to be willing to do buy from them.
I also buy a lot of quiet hardware, like big slow fans, aluminum cases so I can disconnect more fans and so on, but I try never to buy from vendors that call these things "silent."
Buy a commodity dell optiplex gx270 in SFF or even USFF (which mounts behind a flatscreen). As you expect with dell: very good engineering, always leading features and options, great support, etc. Buy from dell outlet and you get a reconditioned box (a couple of months old) still with complete warranty and couple of hundred dollar discount to the off-the-floor price. (Kind of equivalent to buying a car that's only 3 months old).
/.ed. Google Cache here.
-- Every time you kill a kitten, God masturbates.
The noise you are hearing is almost certainly coming from your computer's speakers. What you are probably hearing is power supply noise. On the laptop, you are probably screwed (no space to fix it). On the ITX machine, you might be able to locate the power lines running to your sound card and isolate them a little better (get an EE friend to look at it).
Mute your sound out to see if the sound persists through that.
You might also try turning down the passthrough volume on some of your other sound inputs, like your CD passthrough. I know I had bad bleed through of powersupply noise on one of my systems through that input (same goes for any other sound input).
This is slightly offtopic, but not too much, so here goes.
Anybody have advice for computers for robotics applications? I played around quite a bit with lego mindstorms, and I'm wondering if there's something similar but better out there.
Here's what I'm looking for: something with enough CPU power and memory to be able to run a reasonable OS, like Linux or BSD, consume little power, and have good IO support. Bonus points if it has enough power to be able to run gcc so I don't have to compile my programs somewhere else. Some kind of wireless communications, whether 802.11b or IR serial or whatever, is a must.
The best that I've seen so far is the stuff from Soekris, but I'd be interested to know what slashdotters think, if there are other good choices out there.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I didn't realize how easy it is to actually pay someone with paypal. I have ~30 dollars languishing uselessly in my Paypal account. This guy wanted a meager 1 USD so I clicked on the little paypal icon and in literally 3 clicks the deal was done. This is how the web should work. Better yet, take 1 penny out of my Paypal account every time I visit your site 5 times in a week. After a good slashdotting that guy would get a nice bone for his work and I would make back my contribution many times in Yahoo! stock appreciation.
2004 PCI express will start appearing in a motherboard near you in limited quantities. As AGP is phased out (Intel and ATI will lead this initiative) PCI express will be phased in as the major video card interface on PC's.
I have friends that come over with their shiny AGP radeon 9xxx begging me to go out and blow my money on the card. I keep repeating to them...
No new video card till these minimum requirements are met.
1. 64bit CPU
2. PCI express
3. Doom 3
1 is here, 2 will be in 2004, and 3 according to JC will be here "when it's done".
Are there any 64bit SFF boards?
http://www.lex.com.tw
The 860 will boot via pxe as an x terminal
$250 total
gene at viewtouch.com
Cromell have a mini-itx board that takes PIV-Mobile processors, but its very hard to get hold of. They also have one that takes a standard PIV (aka "system on a heatsink" 8))
For cheap and small the VIA processors are generally better. 60W will run a full VIA C3 based system, and they are fanless to 600MHz (1Ghz with the right cases). Some of these boxes are tiny - the Travla 134 is the same size as a car radio for example