building a mini-itx system

jhewer

jhewer

jhewer

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Joined
4 Feb 2007
Posts
17
Hi,

I posted a thread the other day about building a small file server. I think I've decided to go for a mini-itx based system for the low power consumption and noise.

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Firstly, I've been looking at a Mini ITX retailer and I'm considering the following boards:

Jetway J7F2 1.5GHz C7D Mini-ITX Motherboard (about 80 plus VAT)
EPIA CN 13000G C7 Mini-ITX Board (about 100 plus VAT)

The Jetway seem to be cheaper than the VIA ones, are they as good/reliable?

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Also, I'd want to get a bigger case that the Mini ITX ones. I'm planning on having a CDrom, a IDE hard drive (which I have spare) for the OS and a SATA drive as the main data store.

If I pick up any micro ATX case will it take the mini ITX board, or is this something I need to check carefully about?

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Lastly, power supplies. I'd be driving a CDrom and two hard drives, so the 50W external power supplies won't be enough. I guess I'm after a low power, and preferably silent, internal PSU (assuming I can get a micro ATX case) - any suggestions?

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Thanks for your help,
Jon
 
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Would the picoPSU 120W silent power supply do the job?

Edit: altough by the time I've bought the adapter this is going to cost quite a bit, perhaps just a quiet 200-250W PSU would be better?
 
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Just finished my media player based on the 1Ghz Via board. I installed it in the Lian Li V300 without a problem. There are only 4 mobo anchor points on this ITX board which are in the same locations as the 4 ATX/Micro-ATX anchor points nearest the I/O plate..

Does that make sense to you? The answer to your question is yes, in my experience ITX mobos fit in micro-ATX cases.

If you are using a larger case then I you should use a standard ATX PSU with a temperature controlled fan. As the ITX requires very little power to run a standard PSU should hardly need any fan power to remove the heat. Similar applies to case fans - you don't need hardly any airflow..
 
A 2nd hand Tagan. Loads of power in even 300W systems to power a mini-itx and standard DVD / HDD. Mine also powers the 7" touchscreen that I use instead of a mouse.

Mind you - if you are thinking of a micro-atx case you might want to consider just going for micro-atx mobo and very cheap CPU. The cost will be about the same and you can upgrade as needed. Also - the onboard graphics and sound are likely to be much better. I went ITX because I was planning on building my own super-small case but never got around to it!
 
well the mini ITX boards use on average 15/20W, which is considerably lower than anything else isn't it?

also, a review over at silentpcreview showed that a Sempron 3400+ system only just out performed a mini ITX with 1.5ghz C7 cpu...
 
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Really? That's surprising. I didn't read up that much on ITX systems before starting work (I wanted the form facter for size reasons primarliy not bang per watt!).

Just a quick look around and you can get a µatx mobo and cheap celery for ~ £70.. and the celery could later be upgraded to a Conroe.

I'm happy with the ITX but the more I use it the more I think I could really use...

1) Another PCI slot or more USBs (1 and 4 at the moment)
2) A PCI-E slot

In the media player. No worries, I will probably upgrade next year... :)
 
yeah. however, my priorities are a low running cost rather than upgradability. i'm just going to run this as a fileserver, possibly a personal web server, and to stream music from (i'll stick on freevo probably) - things like that. i have a dvd player which will handle divx, so i don't really need it to movies.

it'll be on the majority of the time, so the low power and low noise factors are a priority.

thanks
 
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Then defo ITX. Have you looked at the passive versions? In a large case (relatively speaking) with a single, volt modded extract fan its should be silent.
 
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