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Old 12th July 2008
JMJ_coder JMJ_coder is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 464
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Hello,

I would suggest http://www.mini-itx.com and/or http://www.mini-box.com, which I think both do international shipping.

I would also suggest that if you are not in an immediate hurry to hold off for a couple of months. By the end of the year the new mini-itx 2.0 motherboards are supposed to hit the stores. Among other updates they are supposed to include the ability to have up to a minimum of 2GB of RAM. See more on this standard from VIA.

As far as motherboards for mini-itx, VIA and Jetway seem to be the two big manufacturers and VIA is the dominant CPU manufacturer. Gigabyte has released two mini-itx boards, but they are a little hard to try and find. Also, AMD has their Geode line that is meant for mini-itx applications - but VIA is much more advanced than anyone in this application. If you want the native encryption, VIA is the only one currently including that with the CPU.

You can easily do a network install - or probably even easier, an install from USB media. If you go with an optical drive, I would say go with the 80W power supply just to be safe, even though the 60W should be enough. You might also want to consider the Pico-PSU.

Morex is a good case manufacturer for mini-itx cases. The 3688 is nice, but if you going with the fanless CPU, why not a fanless case? I myself like the T-3300 and the T-3310.

I don't know what your storage requirements are, but if they are too high, you might consider using CF as a storage medium. We have a thread on that subject here - CF as a *BSD hard drive?. We also have a thread on small systems here - Soekris experiences.
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