small silent linux build?

craptakular

craptakular

craptakular

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Joined
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Hey

Peed off to the max with my desktop "gaming" pc

Considering buying a mac mini or building a silent mini-itx linux box.

linux gods, what silent, 100% linux compatible mini-itx/maybe micro-atx box can you build?
 
I was speccing myself an ion/atom ITX build last night. Not had an opportunity to try Linux on an ion yet though. It's what I'd buy though.
 
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What case did you use?

I think I want to go pico psu to cut down on heat and noise.

I also have two SSD in raid on my gaming pc. Should I rip one out and use it in the ion? or just buy a WD 320GB Blue for £38?

What case were you looking at?
 
I'm running 9.04 on a Asrock ION 330 (N330 Atom ION GPU) and I have to say very happy with it. Totally hassle free. Ditched my machine a month back and definitely haven't looked back. And for £200 I didn't see the point of building on myself.

Any questions let me know.

Dangerstat
 
Oxy said:
how loud is it dude?

Does it have a pico psu?
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It's quiet, but not totally quiet due to (I think) the CPU fan, but I've heard of people taking that out and it's then quiet to the point where you can only hear the HDD (wont be a problem if you use your SSD) and the DVD_+RW. I don't think the Atom needs a cooler at all, but using the (preconfigured) BIOS overclocking options (I've clocked mine from 1.6 -> 2.0 which is litterally a one click option in the BIOS) I'd rather not remove the CPU fan

To get idea of dimensions inside: http://www.viddler.com/explore/TweakTown/videos/36/

The PSU is totally external, it has a thin (very small too) block on the power cord.
 
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looks good. I may build my own though as I would want DVI as an option.

How easy is it to install office 2007 on linux? I need bulletproof stability.
 
Oxy said:
looks good. I may build my own though as I would want DVI as an option.

How easy is it to install office 2007 on linux? I need bulletproof stability.
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With wine it's possible though I couldn't get it to install. The Asrock comes with a HDMI -> DVI connector in the box
 
gah!

I may have to rule linux out for this. :( I need a stable MS Office platform.

Think i'll get a mac mini, should still have good resale value in a couple of years, plus I get student discount.

My printer works a treat on os x, thats the other thing with linux, will my cannon ip470 even work?
 
Oxy said:
gah!

I may have to rule linux out for this. :( I need a stable MS Office platform.

Think i'll get a mac mini, should still have good resale value in a couple of years, plus I get student discount.

My printer works a treat on os x, thats the other thing with linux, will my cannon ip470 even work?
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Well the asrock comes without any OS, so there'd be no issue going with Windows 7 and the 2GB should cope (other asrock users tend to use Windows 7).

The mini mac (even with discount) will be over twice as expensive as the Asrock, but obviously it's your call.

Device support is good (and getting better on Linux) but no idea about your ip470 sorry
 
yeh its a catch 22, I think I can get a mac mini for £400-£450 after my discount, the Atom and ion is around £250-£300 for a build but is 3-4 times less processing power.
 
Oxy said:
yeh its a catch 22, I think I can get a mac mini for £400-£450 after my discount, the Atom and ion is around £250-£300 for a build but is 3-4 times less processing power.
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Really you need to profile your current system. Run a background process recording your CPU / Memory / app usage and then calculate what requirements you need. That's what I did before going Atom / ION. The truth was that only around 10-15% of the time was my CPU using more than 20% of available processing power, and only 5% of the time was it using anywhere close to 8GB of RAM.

I'd wager good money on you having similar issues with your Mac if you buy one. Buy hardware you need, not that you want is my view.
 
yeh I hear what your saying. I'll have to think about it. I have a macbook at and it has been bulletproof, the keyboard is ace, it has never crashed, never frozen but was expensive. :p
 
Oxy said:
yeh I hear what your saying. I'll have to think about it. I have a macbook at and it has been bulletproof, the keyboard is ace, it has never crashed, never frozen but was expensive. :p
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I wish my macbook was, I get the "multi-lingual" screen of death quite often :(
 
I've never encountered any problems, but then again i've been using 2003 for the most part. Each to their own i suppose...

I really don't suggest anything over XP for an Atom, it's not designed to run that sort of OS. Something like Puppy Linux would be miles better.
 
Superewza said:
I've never encountered any problems, but then again i've been using 2003 for the most part. Each to their own i suppose...

I really don't suggest anything over XP for an Atom, it's not designed to run that sort of OS. Something like Puppy Linux would be miles better.
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At incredible, I know loads of people who run W7 on netbooks and all of them say it's perfectly fine :confused: On a dual core Atom it's even more likely to perform well. Strange.
 
@OP about the only issue I take with mini itx atom boards is finding a case for it. I really like the look of the zotac ion board with built in psu, processor, wifi. However I can't find a chassis I like for it. Apparently ocuk have stopped stocking it, so can't link.

I didn't think m$ office was that stable on osx, though I haven't tried it personally. I'm running ubuntu on an atom processor, with xp in a virtualbox running office when required. Messy but it works, and hasn't shown any inclination to crash yet.

Superewza said:
Open office && I really don't suggest anything over XP for an Atom, it's not designed to run that sort of OS..
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Open office isn't all that compatible with microsoft office. Moving documents between them features guesses at the correct formatting and butchering images/tables. I've given up on this and just export to pdf now, the machine I print from doesn't have open office and the mess that arises from trying to convert odt to doc just isn't worth it.

Vista 32bit on a single core atom is doing just fine here, runs about as well as ubuntu. Pretty much the same as XP too. Vista + firewall + antivirus + antispyware would probably not run as well.
 
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