Inexpensive and tiny SFF, does it exist?

[Calista]

A quick look at shopping.com tells us that a laptop (Dell B130) can be had for less than $500 these days. Sure it's lowend (Celeron 1.3, 40GB, 512MB and CD-RW/DVD) but it's still a complete laptop with XP home and a one year warranty.

Imagine we remove the keyboard ($10?), the battery ($20?), the LCD ($40-50?), WiFi-card ($30?), XP Home ($50?) and put the remaining components in a inexpensive case (saving $10-20) and we would more or less have a sub-$350 SFF which would still be capable of dealing with most everyday tasks.

This is not just a calculation exercise, the BOM (Bill-of-Materials, assembly included) of the old Mac Mini G4 was estimated to $280-290. The overhead, ~$200, was used for cost of support, development of OS X, profit and so far.

Anyhow, since it should be possible from a economical point of view, does is exist any complete SFF in the 350-450 price-range?

 

[cparker]

You could get a 754 AMD shuttle sff box for 150 or so at Newegg. (They had them for quite a while for 130 shipped open box.) Then a sempron or Athlon 64 Venice with hs/f for 50-75 or so. 512 stick of ram for another 50. Hard drive for 40. That would be around 300 using the integrated graphics of the shuttle. For another 100 you could get another 512 of ram (1 gig total) and a graphics card that would be Vista Premium Aero compatible. And you could get the Vista RC1 and have a free OS for 9 months or so. And even the beta of office 2007 if that interests you. All this for around 400.

 

[Calista]

These boxes are still quite large, I'm considering something in the X100 size range without paying X100 prices.

 

[phisrow]

It does seem like it could be done; but I don't believe it has been. It may have something to do with the fact that laptops are a well understood, broadly popular category with heavy competition; while SFFs are a comparatively niche thing which has to compete with basic cheap desktops(which are yet cheaper to produce). A box that size would need to be a custom setup so it would have to be produced in bulk to be really cheap. Also, until the SFF market sees heavy competition, the few players that there are, Shuttle, Apple, and a few smaller ones, have no incentive to cater to the low end. Dell and friends can make money on low margins and very high volume, the niche players are much more comfortable building higher spec, higher price, higher margin machines.

It is a pity, though.

 

[VooDooAddict]

How's this?
Asus not quite as small as a X100 but much smaller then a Shuttle (if you complain about no expandable video though ... *prepares the backhand*
)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856110040 - $150 - Case Motherboard, and DVD-ROM/CDBurner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819104245 - $40 - 1.6Ghz Sempron
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820161679 - $75 - 1 Gig DDR400
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144425 - $50 - 80Gig SATA150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116056 - $85 - XP Home
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@ $400 for a nice little "Grandma" Machine

(Then add a 19" LCD Screen for grandma's Eyes)

hmm

 

[cparker]

I like it! Maybe for "Grandpa" too!

 

[DaveSimmons]

The Shuttle X200 with integrated intel graphics 🙁 is supposed to be $500 instead of $700 for the low-end model.

Dell has some tiny slim towers fairly cheap.

 

[dainthomas]

You could throw together a qpack with an nforce 430 board, gig of ram, and sempron or low end a64 for low $400s. Would be a nice little rig and very upgradeable.

 

[continuum]

Smaller than a typical SFF XPC? Hmm... most mini-ITX boards are still pretty pricey... and you need sufficient horsepower to run Windows XP?