Small, Cheap download box?

pointy shadow · 15 Oct 2008 at 19:23

Hi there,

I am looking for a small cheap box that I can leave on overnight downloading stuff.

As the box will be left on overnight I would like as low as possible wattage PSU.
It must have onboard video so I could use a KVM switch and it also must be able to run XP.
The box itself doesnt need a fast CPU as it will only be used for downloading and not anything else.

With the above in mind could someone advise me what I should be looking at as I am not to familiar with the concept of small PCs.
Is there an all in one solution where I could just add a hard drive to it?

Thanks

pointy shadow · 15 Oct 2008 at 19:31

Looks good.

Is there an option to add a bigger HD to it by any chance?

pointy shadow · 15 Oct 2008 at 20:26

500gb is a bit of a downfall im afraid as I would probably end up using it for storage/streaming too.

Whilst the exteral USB drive idea is a good one it wouldnt work as I would want to stream over my network and the speeds of USB are not good for streaming at all.

Would I be looking at a small PC and building it myself or is there an all in one solution?

pointy shadow · 21 Oct 2008 at 13:55

Col_M said:
Hey, I'm looking to do the same thing, I've been researching for a while.

So far the Shuttle K55 and the MSI Wind nettop are level pegging, both being Atom systems and having space for a couple HDDs internally they should be ideal. Add a couple 1TB WD Green Power HDDs and an OS and it'll happly do it's thing all day long at less then 40W.

40w sounds like the type of system I am looking for.

No point in leaving a 300w box on all the time as the prices of electricity nowadays is getting beyond a joke.

Any idea when these systems (40w ones) are out and how much they will cost?

Thanks for all your replies so far

Edit - Guardsman - just seen your post. That looks the business.