Comments on: Shopping for an Intel Mini

By: The Cafes » Intel Macs as Servers

The Cafes » Intel Macs as Servers — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:50:11 +0000

[...] I’ve been thinking about getting an Intel Mac to replace the old Linux box that serves this site. However, a lot of software hasn’t been ported yet, and Rosetta emulation is slow. How much server relevant software is yet native? [...]

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:05:35 +0000

Sal Cangeloso writes about building his own Linux Mini-ITX. That might be worth trying.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:00:52 +0000

I don’t trust refurbs. You don’t save that much money (maybe 15%), you can’t customize what you buy, and you’re likely buying something that’s already failed once, usually with an inadequate warranty.

By: Kent

Kent — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:36:18 +0000

Why not look through the Special Deals link at the Apple on-line store and see if you cannot get a refurbed Mac Mini?

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:02:22 +0000

Fry’s sells bare bones boxes for about $199 and sometimes as little as $149. If I lived in the valley I might pick one up. I’m not sure what shipping adds to that. Plus these don’t have enough memory. I’d have to add $50-100 of extra memory.

Koobox has a decent box for $299 and an even better one for $399.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:51:11 +0000

One more thing - if quiet is important, I’d strongly suggest putting in a 2.5″ notebook harddisk rather than a standard 3.5″ drive. Once you have slow spinning fans, or no fans at all, the harddisk becomes the noisest part, particularly if it’s bolted onto the frame of the case. As well as being much quieter, notebook hard drives have lower power consumption & heat output.

By: Leif Warner

Leif Warner — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:37:57 +0000

My main system now has a Via C3 GigaPro chip soldered into the motherboard. It runs at 733MHz… I guess the ones these days are faster. The chip itself is tiny, and no fan is needed to keep it cool. So the only moving parts in the system are the hard drive and power source fan. If the system’s overall power draw is low, you could get a power source with an adjustable fan speed and crank that down low.

By: Andrew M

Andrew M — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:24:13 +0000

AOpen makes a Mini clone. I don’t have one, and have seen mixed reviews: the main complaints were that it isn’t any cheaper and that it has a fan (!).

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/myaopen/MINIPC.html

By: Bart Guijt

Bart Guijt — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:15:35 +0000

This is just a wild suggestion: How about a Linksys NSLU2 unit (see http://tinyurl.com/b22gt) with a silent USB drive attached, loaded with alternative firmware (see http://nslu2-linux.org/) to support a webserver (see http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Info/ComparingWebServers). Seems that some people are successfully deploying websites with this (see http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Info/WhatPeopleAreReallyUsingTheirSlugsFor)!

You definitely meet the low-noice and power consumption criteria. No CD drive unfortunately …

By: Andrew Semprebon

Andrew Semprebon — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:09:55 +0000

I’ve gotten Microtel boxes from Walmart, and they were ok for the price - not particulary small or quiet though, and as you said, not much memory. When I had to replace my server, I just went directly to the microtel website, where you get a lot more configuration options than buying them through Walmart.