[Neo Demi]

i was out tonight and went to the local scrapyard, and found a 'mini-atx' psu, H x W x D is 6 x 10 x 12.5 cm, and its rated at 150 watts. I was wondering what would i get away with running on this [eg chips? graphics, etc] and what would you recomend i do with the psu. i was thinking either a music box, or a portable pc, not quite a laptop, but small enough to carry around easily.

any help / ideas appreciated

[sirtoby]

well a small server or you could get a TEC and run that off it or something..

but a server box would probably be the best option.

[Neo Demi]

server sounds interesting, i might look into that.

may sound stupid, but whats a TEC?

[sirtoby]

TEC = Thermo-Electric Cooling .. or also known as a peltier.

That's only for extreme cooling though so a server would be your best bet I guess? Unless you need some serious o/cing ..

[Neo Demi]

hmm... tempting to add to my current rig.
just being looking at the via epias, fancy the m10000 but its friggin expensive. could get a cheap harddisc and cdrw and make a portable box for going my holidays.
it would also make a brilliant psu for bench top experiments and electronic circuits....

the possibilities...
what kinda chip do you think would like a psu like that? i was thinking a pentium chip, as far as i know they eat less power than amd chips. amd would be nice though...

[sirtoby]

Well if you're getting a EPIA you won't have to buy a CPU since it comes with a C3 processor..

[Neo Demi]

yeah thats the idea im settled on, the via epia m10000 w/a 1ghz chip onboard, and 512mb of pc2100 ddr ram, a geforce mx 400 64mb card, coz i can get a low profile pci version w/tvout and a dvd/cdrw combo drive. think thisll run of the mini psu?

*edit* forgot to mention i would have 20gig hd on this setup, and a couple of fans so its ice cold

[UnseenMenace]

I run a few Via Epia motherboards and the 1000 mhz one benchmarks out in general a little lower than a 600 celeron.
Certain OS's have conflict problems with graphic cars featuring tv-out as these sometimes conflict with the onboard tv-out.
The power supply you mention will run everything you mention, however be fully aware of what you are buying with the Epia..
It is a great office, net, machine or great if used as a firewall.. its breathtakingly nice with Linux and Windows runs like a three legged dog.
If you are considering playing 3D FPS games of any kind look towards the slightly larger Flex-ATX based systems than the Via ITX systems

[UnseenMenace]

Originally posted by Neo Demi
*edit* forgot to mention i would have 20gig hd on this setup, and a couple of fans so its ice cold

I have a 1000 mhz Mini-ITX running 512 mb PC2100 and a WD 120 gb HD (8mb buffer, 7200 rpm) which produces a processor temprature of 23 - 25 c fully loaded with no fans in the system at all ( I even removed the fan from the processor ).. the complete system is passively cooled.. adding lots of fans to the ITX achieves very little.

( I also have two 993 mhz ITX systems and a Flex-ATX )

[UnseenMenace]

Interesting Thread Worth Reading

Interesting Thread Worth Reading

[UnseenMenace]

Opps another thing worth considering or remembering is that their is two different processor cores for the 1000 mhz Epia and the difference in features is considerable

[Neo Demi]

hmm, so the epia isnt as good as it sounds. now im wondering if a flexatx board is the way to go, but as i wont have a monitor to work it on im wondering does tv out work straight away, or doess the tvout on gforce cards need drivers and such to work?

the idea i had was to build a really small 'briefcase pc'. one thatll work through a normal british tv. the idea seems to have a lot of flaws though.

[CrazyP]

dont know about nvidia cards, but ati cards work straight away

[UnseenMenace]

Originally posted by Neo Demi
hmm, so the epia isnt as good as it sounds. now im wondering if a flexatx board is the way to go, but as i wont have a monitor to work it on im wondering does tv out work straight away, or doess the tvout on gforce cards need drivers and such to work?

the idea i had was to build a really small 'briefcase pc'. one thatll work through a normal british tv. the idea seems to have a lot of flaws though.

Don't get me wrong the Epia is a great machine, that why I have a few and am buying more, however people in general have unrealistic expectations of these machines.. for day to day use such as office work and net surfing they are perfectly suitable, however people forget that this is the processor that is based on the old Cyrix core development and technology... it is a great deal smaller and produces a lot less heat than the SFF (small form factor) mobo's such as Flex-ATX

Flex-ATX is basically a full sized motherboard stripped of features and as such they generally have fewer ram and PCI slots which in turn reduce its physical size, however because they run a normal processor they generally produce heat in the same quantitys as a full size system.. and as such they require suiable cooling.. but they can still be powerfull small systems...

The Gainward Geforce 3 Ti500 128mb Card with TV out works straight out of the box on English TV (im British also).. however picture quality depends greatly on the TV as the refresh rate can be different to that from a monitor

[CrashOveride]

i have been tempted to get one of ITX things... but dont really havea good reason, you might want to ask Capitan slug about what a 150w will do, he luvs making tiiny rigs and somtimes uses low wattage PSU's cuz they fit where he needs em to