Mini-itx Motherboard?

[zmatt]

That looks like an early Nano-itx board. But like I said those C7 chips are pretty slow. A 900mhz C7 is slower than a Pentium 3 at the same speed. You don't want to run xp on it, let alone windows movie maker.

There are plenty of odd things you can fit a Mini-itx board in. You could use an old game console or maybe an old dvd player. Get creative, that's what its all about. I always wanted to stick an itx board in a PS2 case and have its fast enough to play Halo to freak out the Xbox guys. I think the Atom will let me do that after all this time.

 

[philbar71]

^ that dude most likely got it out of a old laptop. it's a crappy pentium 3

bah, matt you beat me

 

[Jester2893]

Yea well, I have decided that if I got ahead with this, it wont be my "main" pc. Ill use it as a small server to hold my music on and everything.


EDIT: Yea I was hoping to get creative. I was going to use an xbox 360 HD-DVD drive case and set it right on top of my xbox 360. =]

 

[philbar71]

^ that might be a bit too small. try something like and old VCR, you could easily get a micro atx mobo in it and have room for a low profile video card.

 

[Jester2893]

^ that might be a bit too small. try something like and old VCR, you could easily get a micro atx mobo in it and have room for a low profile video card.

Yea for a mini-itx, it would have been nice, but I guess its back to the drawing board, as I wanted to use something, I had around the house.

 

[zmatt]

I think the set top box idea is a good one, do you have any old vcr's stereos or dvd players? Any of those would be perfect for a mini-itx mod.

If you are just making a file server than you really don't need much processing power. The major considerations then are network bandwidth and storage. You should be able to fit a desktop hard drive in a set top box no problem so you aren't limited there. Wired networking is a must, no server should every be connected over wifi.

From there you just need the will to do it. You can install Ubuntu server with samba to get networking and you should be good to go.

 

[saltynay]

Saltynay to the rescue what do you want precisely? budget, usage, etc. You can build a 775 mobo itx but you willl find tha psu's limiting the highest i have seen is a 320W external

 

[zedman3d]

Look for a JW-MINIXâ„¢ 780G-SP128MB. Supports Quad Core Phenoms and has a PCIEx16 slot (although it runs at x4, doesnt matter a whole lot though).

So with that you can get a AMD Athlon x2 5000+, and use onboard 3200 graphics or grab a 4670.
J&W Technology Limited

 

[zmatt]

I was about to recommend a 780g actually. The hd3200 is the best IGP on the market. That in itself doesn't say much but it will give you pretty good dvd and bluray playback.

 

[zedman3d]

Especially for a Mini ITX form factor.