[clug] Mini-itx vs Linux on XBox

[James Macnicol]

> the liquid cooling that comes with these boxes means it uses 
> a single wide, slow, fan at the back of the box instead of 
> lots of little screamers, they run very quiet in a tiny footprint.

	I don't think the heatpipe in the Shuttle boxes is really liquid
cooling.  Certainly you don't have to fill it with fluid like a regular
liquid cooling setup.
 
> anyway you asked, we like em.
> 
> with MS XP licence (*sigh*) and a Gb of RAM we're paying 
> around $1,600.
> 
> worth it for us for the footprint and the quiet cooling.

	Which model are you using?  I had an SS51G (Pentium 4, i845
chipset) until I got rid of it recently.  Sure the heatpipe is quiet but
the 12cm fan that came with it was way noisy (but easy to replace).  The
killer was the power supplies which were like vacuum cleaners.  My
Shuttle was by far the noisiest machine I've ever had.  Maybe the newer
ones are better....

	Hopefully in the next six months or so the new BTX form factor
will become widely available, these are designed with much better case
ventilation so that all but high end CPUs and video cards will be
passively cooled.



James