Mini-ITX...

Re: might have known ...

Box is built now - sits next to hi-fi in a cabinet - it is not completely silent - you'd need the fanless versions for that so it's just as well I kept the cabinet when I replaced the old big hi-fi with a mini.

Downloads fly and VNC is much quicker than it was on the Libretto.

Got to get the video and audio leads now (s-video + sp/dif) to hookup to TV. Also bought an RF remote for simple control like playing Divx but it's too klunky for most things so I will have to use VNC still.

Brilliant bit of kit imo.

Re: might have known ...

you made no mistake - you paid only bit more for that M10000 but it will be just right for DivX decoding/encoding because they have much faster FPU and SSE instead of MMX.

I really should have sold you my box cuz its doing nawt right now

Re: might have known ...

Finally bit the bullet and ordered the bits ... went for the dearer M10000 board so it's ended up at over the £200 mark but it will sit near the TV and I'll use it to play divx movies direct from the hard disk with 5.1 sound so I can put off buying a DVD burner for a while - at least until the media gets cheaper.

Re: might have known ...

watch out - you may need low profile memory, most certainly if you try to fit internal drives.

btw next year centrino P4 will appear - with speed, wifi and power consumption that are all tasty in small form factor

Re: might have known ...

I've got enough bits to build one for less than £200 - all I need is a board (£65) + case/psu (expensive at another £65ish) and a stick of memory at around £25. At a push I could forget the case but I'd still need psu as I don't have a spare one.

I'll stick the dvd and second HD from my desktop in (can still use them across the network on any of my other machines).

Don't want to use standard pc which would only cost a bit less anyway because they are big and noisy powerhogs (grandkids often sleep in spare room/office where it would go)

Re: might have known ...

mini itx box is not cheap - it is quiet and small to live in living room, shame for me I dont like living room and prefer my own, hence my miniitx project destined for car rather than room.

the other reason to go miniitx is low power consumption - i planned to have it running like 24x7 in the car with wifi - get extra UPS and it should keep it running for long time.

dont count on encoding of divx movies on it - its well slow, but playing divx is fine.

if you want just p2p box then just get el cheapo box in normal form factor - am getting x2 boxes for my parallel cluster for £200 each (add 250 quid for 2Gig of RAM in each)

might have known ...

that the geek would know

Thanks sir - if it's a bit iffy even with the top notch one I'll probably stick at the klunker and not use it for playback - still need to decide whether to use a computer for that (incovenient - the desktop is in my "office" and a bit noisy anyway) or buy a dvd burner - I fear that my desktop may take a while to re-encode though (1800+ Athlon).

> what exactly is the point in it?
having gone broadband it breaks my heart to see the bandwidth go unused so I have pressed an old Libretto into use as a p2p download machine.

It originally ran win95 but neither winmx nor bittorrent will run on 95. While I was away on hols my son dropped by upgraded it to win98 (he uses vnc to remotely select the stuff he wants as he is deeper in the sticks than me and BB is a distant dream) Sadly the 16Mb of memory just ain't enough ( I'd put 98 on it before and dropped back to 95 some years ago so I already knew that but he didn't).

I need a box I can leave on 24x7 that is quiet enough to stop Mrs. Fiddle whinging - the Libretto is quiet enough but doesn't have the balls - being a cheapskate I want a cheap solution - mini-itx is as cheap as it gets - well less than £200 or half that if I built it in a biscuit tin (I won't).

yeah i've built one a few months ago, was meant to be in-car computer. still looking for good TFT touch screen monitor for car :S

now, if you want DivX playback then you need top of the range M10000 - Nehemia NOT the old one that has M10000 model number! I repeat - divx playback will suck arse even on most M models.

M10000 comes with fan but its very quiet, all in al its not bad, the most expensive bit was slim CDRW - like £150.

bought all stuff from www.linitx.com/-- not first purchase and all worked very well.

re

what exactly is the point in it?

who?

who was your supplier?

www.mini-itx.com ?

Have a 533mhz one

in a silent case with no fans. Cost was less than £200 quid including harddisc so you can't really complain. I'll probably get another one in the near future to run as a low spec windows 2003 test server for the same reason (it can sit running without a fan driving me nuts).

lovely machine for what i need it for (its running debian linux as a firewall and mail server). Can't answer your other questions tho.

Anybody built one ?

I'm thinking of putting one together as a cheapo download box - I reckon the 800MHz one with 256Mb should fly - currently using a P75 with 16Mb which certainly doesn't - only really needs memory but top whack is 32Mb plus it's hard to get and very expensive proprietory laptop memory.

Anybody got experience of DivX playback on the non "M" models - would be quite a bit dearer if I took that route.