vertical mini-itx

souter

Hi,
I want to get a fanless mini-itx for a htpc. One of the drivers for this is so it can be mounted on a wall away from prying little fingers. There are plenty of nice systems that look like AV components eg hush, my question is can these be mounted upright like a book in a case, instead of flat like a book on a table?
I could see this as an issue for passive cooling and for the optical drive.
Anyone have any experience with this issue?
TIA

davidclayton

only speculating here, but for better air flow
you would have to mount it in a certain direction,
the heatsink fins on the mobo should be aligned like this:
[plan view of mobo]

||||||||||||

not like this:
_
_
_
_
_

ie.

____________
| |
| |||||| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|___________|

upright cd drive will not be an issue...
any way but upside-down will work fine.

davidclayton

that pic didn't really turn out well,
bu you get the drift.

davidclayton

you would really want to be using wireless keyboard/mouse also,
or else you'll have wires tracing down the wall. [that could be used to yank it off the wall]

Rew

Originally posted by souter
Hi,
I want to get a fanless mini-itx for a htpc. TIA

Most optical drives can be mounted sideways some are better then others for this. If you get a slim drive they are like laptop drives and can be mounted anyway you like.

If you are going fanless be very carefull that the board has enough grunt for what you want. We have the fan ones here and they really dont make much noise plus you get more mhz then the passive ones.

davidclayton

i bought one of these last week:
http://www.cartft.com/shop/catalog/il/63
i'll let you know if it's any good.
i'm building the pc at the moment...

Rew

What do you plan to use it for out of curosity? I want to build a small media center PC but im not sure I trust the MiniITX, must try it out with one of the ones from work. A decent case is also an issue for me.

davidclayton

i'm gonna use it for a mp3 sound system.
[there's more to it]
i'll put up a post when it's finished.

custom made case

Dr_Teeth

http://uk.asus.com/products/desktop/pundit/overview.htm

A friend of mine bought one of these as the basis of a home entertainment PC system a while back, and was very impressed by it.

Teeth.

halenger

Personally I'm waiting for the new Epia (SP) before building a PVR style system. Reason being the onboard Mpeg4 support, the higher clock speeds, S-ATA and faster ram speeds.

Let us know how it turns out. Especially DVD playing. Speaking of which - which motherboard did you go for?

Rew

Originally posted by halenger
Personally I'm waiting for the new Epia (SP) before building a PVR style system. Reason being the onboard Mpeg4 support, the higher clock speeds, S-ATA and faster ram speeds.

Looks nice wonder how much €€€

Dr_Teeth: Do you know how much the case was and where he bought it?

Dr_Teeth

Dunno, google for it.

Teeth.

halenger

Rew wrote:

Looks nice wonder how much €€€

It'll probably be the most expensive. Pushing 200 at least would be my guess but absolutely NO indication whatsoever as of yet.

The less the better.

Rew

halenger wrote:

It'll probably be the most expensive. Pushing 200 at least would be my guess but absolutely NO indication whatsoever as of yet.

The less the better.

Bought these ones at €200 so maybe that one will be a bit less...

http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia_MII_spec.jsp?motherboardId=202

halenger

I'd imagine it'll be the price of the MII or more... It is faster and has far more new technology in it. They might just bring the MII down in price and have it at the MIIs price. Guess we'll have to wait and see!