[I gotta say, man. There's something wrong with the servers on these forums. I had a double post so I erased the second one and now the first, the one with all my discussion, is gone. What's up with that? Must be a new feature here at the forums.]
OK, once again...
I'm all excited about mini-itx. Why?
I began building systems back with the VIA KT133 chipset. I built 3 systems using motherboards by iWill. At the time either Tom's Hardware or Anandtech.com reviewed them with recommendations. I still have the one I kept and it's still running flawlessly.
Then it began.
Each successive build after that used bigger heat sinks, bigger fans (remember something called The Tornado?-- and other solutions that sucked the money right out of our pockets!) then we moved from aluminum to copper for some heat sinks, etc. Overclocking? "Sure." I damn near need help moving some of my overweight builds. [I know you've been there.]
Then I saw it.
There it was in all its miniature beauty... mini-ITX.
Sure, I'd seen SFFs before. Hell, I bought one made by Biostar. But they were sold as complete systems (minus the cpu and memory) with the usual high wattage PSUs and hot running CPUs. And there were the tiny mini, nano, pico by via, but they were't serious computers according to posts by others.
The one I got excited about was built by Intel. Yah,.. Intel. Chipzilla herself had turned her frightful eye toward the mini and tossed out a 2 lb. test line with the D201GLY at it's end.
I bit.
Ok, once I had it home, it wasn't all buttercups. D201GLY wouldn't run under Windows 2K which I had figured to use. It was my way to re-activate a retired OS sitting on a shelf. It seems the "Little Valley" as Intel named the D201GLY, only has drivers for XP or linux.
Obviously, it runs slower than my X2, but it suprised me by running Luxor, a 2D game my gf likes, and all on its IG. Enough. I stuck it into a small case with a 90W MAX PSU with a laptop hard drive and installed it into a childcare to be used as a networked clockin/out station for parents.
Why do I want these?
My nephew's childcare center has a dozen computers for the kids. Yep, the test environment from hell. I want to go mini and bolt these little gems under the desktop with just the keyboard, mouse and monitor on top.
Hey, Intel. Are you listening?
What I want is a mini-itx with integrated graphics like the 6100 chipset that AMD customers enjoy and a 45nm celeron M that uses electricity like an old woman sipping hot tea. All for a price like your Little Valley. Is that too much to ask?
OK, once again...
I'm all excited about mini-itx. Why?
I began building systems back with the VIA KT133 chipset. I built 3 systems using motherboards by iWill. At the time either Tom's Hardware or Anandtech.com reviewed them with recommendations. I still have the one I kept and it's still running flawlessly.
Then it began.
Each successive build after that used bigger heat sinks, bigger fans (remember something called The Tornado?-- and other solutions that sucked the money right out of our pockets!) then we moved from aluminum to copper for some heat sinks, etc. Overclocking? "Sure." I damn near need help moving some of my overweight builds. [I know you've been there.]
Then I saw it.
There it was in all its miniature beauty... mini-ITX.
Sure, I'd seen SFFs before. Hell, I bought one made by Biostar. But they were sold as complete systems (minus the cpu and memory) with the usual high wattage PSUs and hot running CPUs. And there were the tiny mini, nano, pico by via, but they were't serious computers according to posts by others.
The one I got excited about was built by Intel. Yah,.. Intel. Chipzilla herself had turned her frightful eye toward the mini and tossed out a 2 lb. test line with the D201GLY at it's end.
I bit.
Ok, once I had it home, it wasn't all buttercups. D201GLY wouldn't run under Windows 2K which I had figured to use. It was my way to re-activate a retired OS sitting on a shelf. It seems the "Little Valley" as Intel named the D201GLY, only has drivers for XP or linux.
Obviously, it runs slower than my X2, but it suprised me by running Luxor, a 2D game my gf likes, and all on its IG. Enough. I stuck it into a small case with a 90W MAX PSU with a laptop hard drive and installed it into a childcare to be used as a networked clockin/out station for parents.
Why do I want these?
My nephew's childcare center has a dozen computers for the kids. Yep, the test environment from hell. I want to go mini and bolt these little gems under the desktop with just the keyboard, mouse and monitor on top.
Hey, Intel. Are you listening?
What I want is a mini-itx with integrated graphics like the 6100 chipset that AMD customers enjoy and a 45nm celeron M that uses electricity like an old woman sipping hot tea. All for a price like your Little Valley. Is that too much to ask?
I'm getting ready to build my first mini-ITX box and it would be nice to converse some more about ITX boxes in general.
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