Which atom board?

[celliott]

I'm putting together a small home server and the key thing on my mind at the moment is that it needs to be quiet + gigabit lan. In otherwords it must be passive cooled.

I'm definatley going atom 330 based, and this has brought me down to the boards below.

My main question is the ION based ones, is that purley a graphics engine or a chipset? I'm going to be running Linux so need to make sure it will be compatible.

Intel Board

Made by Intel so will be rock solid. Gigabit LAN, Atom 330, Noisy fan on Northbridge

Biostar Board

Completely passive, Atom 330, 100Mbit LAN, would have to use PCI gigabit card.

Point of View Board

Completely passive but small heatsink, gigabit LAN, takes laptop ram but no biggie. Nvidia ION chipset?

Zotac Boards = Out of budget really, + I dont need blueray playback functionality

Thanks

 

[bledd]

there's also the Jetway JNC91-330-LF

and the new D945GSEJT -this is a 270, not a 330, but take a look at it, it's TINY, and can use an external power supply, no need to hook up the internals, it also takes laptop DDR2 ram, also takes onboard mini-pcie cards (for wireless), and you'll still have the standard PCI slot free

http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2009/06/hands-on-whs-build-with-intel-d945gsejt.html 13W

 

[Methanoid]

I have the Intel board and silenced it by removing the chipset fan and placing a 120mm fan above it on slow speed exhausting all chipset heat and system heat from the case (Compucase 8K01). And it runs Ubuntu, XP, OSX and Amithlon - rather compatibly!!

Its in FS forum now