Mini PC's
 

Anyone have one of those new mini pc's? i just ordered the new Shuttle mini pc and i really cant wait till it gets in. I was just wondering if anyone else here had one and what they think of them.

Place let us know.... i've seen a lot of spec pages, but havent really heard ppl's feedback.

What do you plan to use it for? Media center, Lan parties, or novelty?

I go to lots of LAN parties and I am an big gamer. Its so much easier to carry a small computer compared to my mammoth case i have now. Its gonna be the new 2.8 GHz p4 with 800 MHz FSB and a gig of pc 3200 ram. right now i have a geforce 4 Ti 4200 but i will be getting a better video card soon.

The small size of the PC makes sense, but what about the keyboard and monitor when you travel with it?

I have the shuttle one. It accualy one of the first generations of the shuttle ones they are ok but hard to work in but I just have big hands. Also of course dont plain to overclock the thermal dynamics of the case are not that good of course.

Yeah those Shuttles look dope. If I ever get any spending money, I'm probably going to get one of those, but I'd like to try doing something with an ITX board. I like the weird stuff they do at www.mini-itx.com

My housemate was talking about making an ITX system full of video game emulators and ROMS and running it as an uber game console, as well as a DVD player (and burner?) for our TV downstairs. There is also the possibility of making it an mp3 jukebox. Maybe we'd gut an old VCR or game console and use that as the case? Remote control input and TV for the video output. Man, that'd be nice.

my monitor is a flat panel so thats easy to deal with and my keyboard and stuff just goes in a backpack, the only thing that was a pain to carry was my 65 lb steel case.

The cooling isnt very good in these? damn

shuttles are nice, but mini-itx can be cool, esp for case mods.

westothemax: if you want to make a machine for game emulators, dvds and divx, mp3s, I would suggest getting an X-box and modding it. It would go ~$200 and the TV out on the XBox is incredible. It even comes with controlers so playing console games arent that bad. It has ethernet, so you can pull things from your comp. Last i checked, there were emulators for nearly all game systems including psx. I wouldn't think an ITX (via) could do it, but a shuttle certainly can.

Now there's a cool project. X-Box modding. I've heard a lot about it but I don't know much of the details. It's probably a lot easier than I think, eh? I think people can get their ITXs to do really neat stuff though... they're suprisingly powerful, keep fairly cool, and are ultra quiet. I think ITXs require an additional decoder card to help out with playing DVDs and such, but emulators and mp3s shouldn't be a problem. I don't know though, I haven't done much research.

Mini-ITX boxes are pretty cool unless you want to fit much in them.

Not many PCI slots, and it's really crowded in there if you change hardware often.

They sure are pretty, though.

I have a Shuttle Xpc and I love it. I have the AMD version with the GF4 nForce chipset. It's a great pc but only problem is that its at work on my desk and not at home :(

These are suppose to come with some tricked out cooling system that uses some type of copper heat pipes cooled by the same fan that the power supply uses or something like that. I didn't install the mobo software so I can't check the temp at the moment.

Really like it alot. If I get one I'd upgrade the video card tho.

Ya i have been looking at those heat pipes and they seem to be really good at cooling, i cant wait till Monday cuz thats when its supposed to come in.

Ya I am gonna upgrade my video card soon enough, it sucks being a poor college student.:mad:

the newest mini-itx 1ghz can do divx and dvd playback fine, and should be able to emulate 16bit consoles fine, but anything higher requires more horsepower and a much better gfx card. some of the newer mini-itxs have built in mpeg2 decoding and tv-out i believe so dvd's are no problem. They are designed to be silent media boxen. more info at www.mini-itx.com

I have the Shuttle SB51G with a P4 2.4Ghz and a GeForce 4. It's got a 7200 rpm hard drive a CD/RW/DVD drive in it and it overheats and locks up during games if I leave the case cover on. I run it without the cover, but it kinda pisses me off.

Max case temp gets up to 122 F and that's about where it locks it up. The 200 watt power supply gets rather hot too ~116F, but the CPU stays below 110F

Anyone else had this sort of problem?

Just want to drop some info about the big X. Well, in some studies I have heard about x-box's don't do as well as pc's with basicly the same stuff in them.

freedomdowntime: Perhaps, but it worked well in our dorm for what we wanted (emulation, divx, dvds). We were able to save tons of space becuase we didn't need a nes, snes, genesis and psx lying around anymore. Still needed our sega saturn for the 10 player bomberman (best fun you will ever have) but other than that, we were all set.

http://flamethroweros.sourceforge.net/ is a linux distro for multimedia use if anyone wants it. It looks well designed.

tech tv has a couple series on x-box mods , some pretty cool stuff goin on.there`s been lots of stuff on the minis.i`m on the con now trying to convince my wife , i like the amd model.i want to run xp media on it .