[SC.LUG] Bill Gates to be Knighted?

[Ian Molton]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:39:41 +0000
John Southern <john at sinoda.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> As I do not feel confident about plumbing in a water cooled system, what is 
> the alternative?

The Shuttle XPC barebones systems are super quiet (so much so that you really need to buy them a quiet disc like a Seagate barracuda to do them justice) and also fantastically good value.

the SN45G (that I have is *fully* supported by o/s drivers (except perhaps firewire but I have heard that it works - I have no devices to test that theory).

The SN41G2 has *dual* geforce4MX video (15 pin) ouptuts, and is slightly slower (333Mz bus not 400) and, of course, will require nvidias binary driver if you use the onboard video (for 3D - the open driver is fine for 2D).

The Nforce2 chip is *blazingly* fast - I can get bursts of 8.5GB/sec out of the dual-channel RAM system.

It has:

Front:
audio (mic, line, headphone) and the sockets defeat the duplicates on the rear panel
2x USB 2.0
1x mini firewire

Back:
1x AGP (8x) (supported by linux AGPgart)
1x PCI
audio (*optical* SPDIF in AND out) plus the usual analogue outputs
2x USB 2.0
10/100 Ethernet
PS/2 kbd and mouse
2x firewire

Optional (headers on mainboard)
2x (or was it 4) more USB 2.0
1x parallel
Infrared
Wireless (needs a plug in module)

All the usual drive connectors

Dual-channel RAM (which really *is* 2x as fast as single channel) (ie. uses both sticks simultaneously)

uses heatpipes to draw heat to a nice big radiator unit (internal at the back, with a big *SLOW* quiet fan)

Go on, you know you want one... (oh yeah, and they are *TINY*).

Case, Mobo, Heatpipe, and PSU all come as a bundle for less than 140ukp. (either model)

-- 
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