[ILUG] Mini ITX systems

[Ciaran Johnston]

Ronan Cunniffe said:
>
>
> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, Ciaran Johnston wrote:
>
>> Hi folks,
>> I am looking at buying a mini itx system to stick under the stairs and
>> was
>> wondering if anyone had any experiences with these systems they'd like
>> to
>> share. It will of course be running Linux, and I envisage it acting as a
>> file and print server and needs to be quiet, with low power consumption
>> and stability, while holding a hard disk or two and a DVD writer. I'm
>
> Your problems will be HD overheating and power supply.
>
> In the Olden Days (i.e. 20-40GB ATA-66 @ 5400rpm), hard disks consumed
> ~0.5W on the 5V rail and ~0.4-0.5W on the 12V rail.  Now these newfangled
> "quiet" fluid bearings have pushed the 12V rail current up to ~1A.  Short
> version: power consumption went from 7-8W to 15W+.

I thought this might be an issue. I do have some older 10Gb HDDs that are
probably suitable, and some 40Gb drives that don't heat up too much. I
may, however, just buy an external drive for the craic.

>
> The small cases have small 55-65W powersupplies.  No dogs or full size
> CD/DVD devices allowed.  One alternative would be a standard case with a
> bigger PSU, but then you've PSU fan noise to deal with.  How quiet is
> quiet?

It'll be in a pretty central point in the house, so as quiet as possible.
I guess with an external drive the smaller PSU should suffice for the rest
of the kit.

>
> Other aspects: the very oldest board (EPIA 5000) is a bit sluggish doing
> ssh - basically it tops out at something like 2MB/s doing scp or
> ssh/rsync over ethernet.  It's also using PC133.  Absolutely perfect for
> firewall/squid boxes though.  It also has a Trident Cyberblade i/1
> graphics chip.  I haven't come across a graphics chip that sucked like
> this since the Cirrus Logic 4MB PCI cards from... quite a long time ago.
> Basically, they have a low bandwidth ceiling, and top out at
> 1280x1024x24 at 60Hz, which is fine on an LCD, unwatchable on CRT.  You can
> up this by dropping to 16-bit colour though.  At least some of the
> later boards have better graphics chips.

Graphics isn't an issue, but SSH is. Thanks for the info.

>
> Regards,
>
> Ronan
>


Regards,
Ciaran.