{"id":103,"date":"2006-01-24T07:09:24","date_gmt":"2006-01-24T12:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=103"},"modified":"2022-04-24T15:22:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T19:22:16","slug":"shopping-for-an-intel-mini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/mac\/2006\/01\/24\/shopping-for-an-intel-mini\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopping for an Intel Mini"},"content":{"rendered":"

This site is served by an eight-year old, 300 MHz Pentium II, Debian Linux box in my home office. It works well enough for my needs. However recently the system has begin making occasional whining noises for intermittent periods. I’m afraid it’s on its last legs. <\/p>\n

I had hoped to replace it with an Intel Mac Mini; but sadly that did not arrive at MacWorld, and seems unlikely to arrive before April 1 at the earliest. In the event I need to quickly replace this system, what do people recommend for small, quite, cheap, energy-efficient X86 box? Here are my requirements:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Must have 100 Mbps or faster Ethernet. <\/li>\n
  2. All hardware fully supportable by Linux.<\/li>\n
  3. CD drive required. DVD optional.<\/li>\n
  4. Under $500, ideally under $200. Note that I do not need or want a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. <\/li>\n
  5. Operating system not required. <\/li>\n
  6. Zero-noise. I will pay more to get this.<\/li>\n
  7. Small, ideally mini sized or smaller. I will pay a little more to get this. <\/li>\n
  8. Energy efficient. It should draw less than 60W, ideally less than 45W. <\/li>\n
  9. AMD chips are a plus, but not a requirement. <\/li>\n
  10. An ATI Radeon video card is a plus, but not a requirement. I’ve just had better luck with ATI cards over the years.<\/li>\n
  11. 802.11 is a plus. I’d pay a little extra for this<\/li>\n
  12. Bluetooth is a plus. I’d pay a little extra for this<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So, what are my options? Wal-Mart sells a $220 bare bones Microtel box<\/a> that might do the trick if I added a little memory (though I wish they’d knock ten bucks off the price and leave out the mouse, keyboard, speakers, and OS). Does anyone know what one of these things sounds like? <\/p>\n

    Possibly a Shuttle<\/a> bare bones system? The price is starting to climb once I add all the pieces though; but at least it’s small.<\/p>\n

    NorhTec has some interesting small servers<\/a>, but they may be a little too small for me (no CD drive). Plus they’re on the expensive side.<\/p>\n

    If this server dies in the meantime I guess I’ll just repurpose my whitebox desktop Linux system for the time being, but that’s quite big and noisy; and I’d rather not turn it on in my office full time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This site is served by an eight-year old, 300 MHz Pentium II, Debian Linux box in my home office. It works well enough for my needs. However recently the system has begin making occasional whining noises for intermittent periods. I’m afraid it’s on its last legs. I had hoped to replace it with an Intel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,14],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","category-mac","tag-flash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005601,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/1005601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}