Mini-ITX Computing For Everyone

An anonymous reader writes "So you have decided that you want an ITX system. Whether it's just to look cool or because you need to reclaim the desk space. Most people wouldn't know where to start when creating their system. Fear no more because XYZComputing.com has created a step by step process on how they created their system. Based on an MII10000 and using a USB Pen to load up Puppy Linux. No details are omitted so if you are new to Mini-ITX and do not have a clue what you need or where to start then this would certainly be a good place to start."

Comments

Re:seems like a lot of work

[TruePaige]

Some people enjoy building computers, as some people may enjoy watching a football game. Plus the savings money wise is very nice in the pocket. I assume you just don't get it. ~_^

How stable is it?

[rsilvergun]

I went through 2 via boards on linux before settling on an Nvidia board because I just couldn't get the damn things stable (to be fair, the soyo board was stable so long as I didn't plug anything into the pci slots).

The other thing I'd love to know is if it can do full screen, high res divx in linux, or if there's a mini itx case that can. I figure most of these boards aren't going to run an accelerated X, but I haven't done enough research yet.

mATX ITX

[Fortress]

For my money, the mATX boards are a much better value. Cheaper, mainstream processor support, support for the usual PCI/PCIe/AGP peripherals means a more powerful, robust, upgradeable system. Plus, you can get cases that look like a piece of stereo equipment and can be unobtrusive in your living room.

IMHO, ITX is better suited for embedded systems, not a more general purpose computer. Unless you have a very specific, limited use (like a MythTV frontend), you'll almost always be better served getting an mATX-based system.

As with everything, YMMV.

the fine print

[The Fun Guy]

From the last page of TFA:

With a few additions, like a hard drive and optical drive, a computer like this one could easily be a great work computer.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement....

Disapointed by the old Epia-M (@933)

[obarthelemy]

I have an old Epia-m @933MHz that I tried to revive just yesterday. This is an old version of the Epia, I do think (and hope) the newer ones are better.

It took my 3 tries to get Windows up and running (correct steps are 1- update BIOS, 2- Install Windows, 3-Install drivers, 4- Windows Update a few times), while keeping your fingers crossed.

It hangs while lauching powerDVD and WinDVD, and VLC is too jerky to use (at 640x480x32@75)

I checked, it still costs 2 to 3 times more than a regular MATX board+proc, for about 1/2 to 1/4 the power. Plus, cases are VERY expensive if you want something that look nice, plus a low profile DVD reader/writer (check www.mini-itx.com).

It's kind of cool to have, and makes a nice conversation piece for all my nerd friends, but usage value is very low. I don't think I could make any kind of server of it. Maybe a router, a basic Windows Office PC, or a linux experimentation platform (but drivers are an issue).

It IS incredibly small, very silent, and does work.

Re:seems like a lot of work

[Wavicle]

My server at home, which sits on a static IP address, is a mini-itx based machine. It provides me with: web hosting, email hosting, storage, inside network services and firewalls outside access to my TiVo. Why did I do this with a mini-itx instead of a shuttle? Well, there are several disadvantages to Shuttle over Mini-itx:

• Noise. The shuttle will likely produce a lot more. The only moving part on my server is the hard drive platters, and they are hermetically sealed and use fluid dynamic bearings. As hard drives go, they are whisper quiet. I've bought a lot of fans in my time, even some rather expensive ultra-quiet ones. Given enough time, all of them eventually get dust in the bearings and start making a racket.
• Size. Shuttle is small, this thing is smaller.
  
• Heat. There is not a single fan running on my server. The hottest component by far is the hard drives.
  
• Power. This goes along with heat. The power supply's peak sustained output is 60W. I'd be suprised if the unit consumed more than 25W except during hard drive spin up.
  
• Battery back up lifetime. This goes along with power. A standard consumer UPS will run this thing for many hours. No, I haven't tested how long. It has survived 3 hour power outtages.
  

Put all this together, and I can hide the server in a closet and forget about it. Just need a power drop and two network connections.

Re:Easier process

[burnin1965]

At first I was going to disagree with you, however, after checking the details on the Mac Mini specs it is impressive. I was expecting the mini-ITX to beat the Mac Mini hands down on power efficiency but it looks like they are on par with one another.

You can still beat the Mac Mini price by well over $100 if you piece together a mini-ITX system with similar specs, but the Mac will have a much more powerful CPU and GPU. If you don't need the extra CPU and GPU power then the cost savings may make the mini-ITX a better solution.

I've used mini-ITX systems in several applications, webservers, firewalls, wifi access points, etc., but I will definitely consider the Mac Mini hardware in future projects that may need more oompf. Especially since it appears it is quite easy to install linux over the top of OSX. While OSX is a nice OS (works great on my dual 1GHz G4) but it would waste resources on a headless box.

burnin

Re:seems like a lot of work

[Wavicle]

There's really not much to tell, the mini-itx has most of the peripherals on board. It's an EPIA MII 6000 mainboard sporting a 600MHz processor that I think I've clocked down to 533... or maybe it always ran at 533... Anyway, /proc/cpuinfo assures me it's at 533 MHz.

I'd like to say I had a good reason for only putting a 256MB DIMM on the board, but the truth is I had a 256MB DIMM harvested from another machine upgrade lying around, so I didn't even shop for something larger. There is only one DIMM slot on the board though.

Since that board has only one network interface, the lone PCI slot on the machine has another network card in it. I seem to remember that the motherboard had some problems with many PCI NICs, I had to shuffle through a few before finding one that worked.

The hard disks are samsung spinpoint V series 160GB drives which are raid mirrors of one another. Each drive is on a separate IDE cable (the Linux RAID HOWTO said that putting both drives on the same IDE cable was a sure way to kill performance). I'm sure someone out there is incredulous with the meager storage I have, but to be fair when I built the machine a couple years ago, 160GB was a fair sized drive and I haven't filled the drive up anyway.

It has an old CD-ROM I had lying around attached to it, but I don't think it has been used since the OS was installed.

The power supply I got from mini-box.com I believe. It has two parts: one that looks like a laptop power supply and another that attaches to the mini-itx board.

The server is running Gentoo Linux. I have several machines pick up and do a distcc to help the poor server through the big compiles. I've got my own set of iptables running as well as dhcpd, samba, apache2, tomcat, exim, sshd, courier-imap, postgres and named. Sadly, uptime right now is only 111 days. Every so often I want to download the latest Fedora Core, Knoppix, MAME ROMs or whatever and I'll use the server to do that as well (soaks a lot of CPU cycles to do bit torrent though). It's cheaper to have the server download the latest fedora DVDs than to leave one of my bigger machines on overnight.

The only thing it's not doing anymore is print serving. Although it could, the printer is doing fine attached to another box right now.