to the IT people -fanless PC

[dieselboy]

hi,
im after a fanless pc if possible, needs to have dual nic's. apart from that there is no other real preference apart from it needs to be as small as possible

was thinking may be a shuttle pc, single core cpu will be fine, 1.8ghz+ / pentium 4 or amd equivelant also fine, needs 512mb ram.

anyone have any ideas? all the PCs i search for are hundreds £, and are way over the top for what i need.

ta.

[JUDWAK]

hi,
im after a fanless pc if possible, needs to have dual nic's. apart from that there is no other real preference apart from it needs to be as small as possible

was thinking may be a shuttle pc, single core cpu will be fine, 1.8ghz+ / pentium 4 or amd equivelant also fine, needs 512mb ram.

anyone have any ideas? all the PCs i search for are hundreds £, and are way over the top for what i need.

ta.

my last commy was a dell
it ran better thab this peace of crap iam on and it was half its size
cheap too
and dont listen to the horror storys dell run forever
and if they dont dell replace it for free
they have payment plans too
i got my last pc from them
i turned it off about once a mounth to hoover it out
other than that i never had no problems with it not once
i should have kept it

[JUDWAK]

http://www.pc-order.co.uk/uk/dell-of...FVSK3godRWPq0g
thats this mounths pc offers
i may get mi sen 1

[dieselboy]

my last commy was a dell
it ran better thab this peace of crap iam on and it was half its size
cheap too
and dont listen to the horror storys dell run forever
and if they dont dell replace it for free
they have payment plans too
i got my last pc from them
i turned it off about once a mounth to hoover it out
other than that i never had no problems with it not once
i should have kept it

i use a dell latitude for work. ive never had such a piece of crap computer. constantly locking up where it cant cope the the small amount of programs im running. it gets so bad you cant even move the mouse accross the screen.

most of the time you hear clicking noises and other strange bangs coming from the hard disk. we bought 20 of these laptops, and every one is the same. i hope it dies soon so it can be fixed. its been doing this out the box, and is about 8 months old now.

did i mention its a laptop? but dont move it while its switched on, or else the clicking gets worse.

[dieselboy]

http://www.pc-order.co.uk/uk/dell-of...FVSK3godRWPq0g
thats this mounths pc offers
i may get mi sen 1

all i need is a small form factor unit, a hard disk, a motherboard and power supply and a basic gpu card to view the initial install.

after that the pc is going under a desk, connected to a router and my internal switch, and a power cable. no other cables are necessary as any configuration of it will be from another machine - its going to be a firewall.

[JUDWAK]

i use a dell latitude for work. ive never had such a piece of crap computer. constantly locking up where it cant cope the the small amount of programs im running. it gets so bad you cant even move the mouse accross the screen.

most of the time you hear clicking noises and other strange bangs coming from the hard disk. we bought 20 of these laptops, and every one is the same. i hope it dies soon so it can be fixed. its been doing this out the box, and is about 8 months old now.

did i mention its a laptop? but dont move it while its switched on, or else the clicking gets worse.

use the desk tops
hoover them out and they run fine

[jmc]

Not sure you'll get a passively cooled 1.8Ghz cpu in a small enclosure just because of the lack of airflow.

Have you had a look at any mini ITX systems? You'll have to take a hit in CPU speed but other than that they sound ideal for what you want.

http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/Produ...?ProductID=368

[MattF]

You're looking for the wrong thing. Also, if it's going to be a firewall only, you sure as hell don't need a hard disk on it. You can easily cover the operating requirements with some form of electronic media drive.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

[dieselboy]

You're looking for the wrong thing. Also, if it's going to be a firewall only, you sure as hell don't need a hard disk on it. You can easily cover the operating requirements with some form of electronic media drive.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

yea you are right.
other than CD rom, how would i load the initial image though... ?

[dieselboy]

this is what i would be after, as once ive finished playing with firewalling, i can then replace our dvd player (on its way out!) with a divx / vlc player

http://www.mpl.ch/t24b0.html

cant find its price anywhere

[MattF]

yea you are right.
other than CD rom, how would i load the initial image though... ?

Flash card reader/writer. Do a search for diskless NetBSD router. There was a pretty good write-up somewhere on the net with the specifics. One of the write-ups also had a link to a site which supplies some lovely little boards which are perfect for the use you are envisaging. Can't remember the name of them offhand for love nor money though.

[RodLeach]

Why do you need fanless PC?!


Out of curiosity you understand.

[MattF]

this is what i would be after, as once ive finished playing with firewalling, i can then replace our dvd player (on its way out!) with a divx / vlc player

http://www.mpl.ch/t24b0.html

cant find its price anywhere

I noticed these in the CPC flyer the other day. May be worthwhile having a look at too:

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/search/br...questid=277566

[MattF]

Why do you need fanless PC?!


Out of curiosity you understand.

Reliability or power consumption, most likely.

[dieselboy]

Why do you need fanless PC?!


Out of curiosity you understand.

to make it silent. the only noise in my room, when the pc is on is its hard disks and psu fan.
i have a semi-fanless cpu design, where initially the fan is off, until it needs to come on. and if i booted it up and just web browsed or watched a film then the fan will never come on. the psu fan is 120mm and slowly circulates the hot air out the back, but it speeds up if it needs to.
the cpu has a heat sink the size of a toaster (almost!) and it also has 2 120mm fans on, but i could have got away with 1, but i had one spare so rigged it to be used also.


thanks for the links! dont look i'll be buying any time soon though, not now i need to spend more money on the car this month


EDIT:
also, once ive finished using it, i want to place it in the front room to be a mini media centre.
p.s. what rpm are sky box hard disks? our one makes a very high pitched noise only i can hear!