Tiny PC.

I'm looking to replace the tired old PC with something shiny and new, but most of important, quiet and small.

I'm looking at this from Novatech, simply cus its tidy, small, cheap and I can just fit my old drive and look at getting SATA later.

So my budget is 200 max... any ideas.

Fave subject of mine. First, some warnings.

Tiny = challenged air flow = higher temperatures = necessitates running fans at higher speed to maintain operating limits = higher noise.

Now, somewhat illogically, often the quietest setups are in the tiniest PCs because they're typically used for home media centre applications and this is an environment in which high noise is not acceptable.

Fans are the big culprits, whether those be CPU, graphics, PSU or case fans. Basic principle is bigger is better - a 12cm fan can push the same amount of air running at 800RPM as a 9cm fan running at twice the revs. Ergo less noise with the bigger fan. Isolating the fan from the case by means of rubber gromets or somesuch limits vibrations transferring to the case which in turn vibrate and amplify noise.

Fan control is something to consider - are fans temperature controlled, are they manually controllable? Temperature control fans have a plus point in that they run slow and quiet when not needed, although often you'll find fans constantly changing velocity and this constant change is more noticeable than a static (if higher) noise.

Hard drive noise is another one, personally I kinda like the seek chatter, it's something about knowing the machines doing something. Others hate it, it's semi random nature is something ears naturally pick up on - key here is isolating the hard drive from the case to prevent those vibrations reaching and being amplified by the case - rubber mount points go a little way, actually suspending the drive from the mount points by elastic bands goes a lot further.

Ok, those are general points, onto your specific bundle.
Assuming your current hard drive is IDE from your post, there is only one IDE port on the board - this may be taken up by the CD/DVD drive - you can get SATA CD/DVD drives now though. Either way, just something to note.
It's not particularly small, not what I'd call tiny anyway - it looks like it's using a full sized ATX motherboard rather than the smaller variants - I'd draw out the dimensions on a desk and get a feel for whether it's sized ok for you.

What are you going to use it for? The onboard graphics will be fine for general stuff (and crucially will be quiet) but will be the limiting factor if the kids want to play games (it should run a lot of them just fine, but some newer fancier titles might stretch it, possibly including favourites that aren't considered hardcore gaming titles like The Sims). But you can always add a seperate graphics card at a later date should that prove necessary. But then if it's only going to be used for work, surfing and the like then you can definitely get a significantly smaller, possibly a tad cheaper, unit, although you sacrifice some future upgradeability.

Further quiet PC reading - www.quietpc.com - the forums are useful, take what they say on the product descriptions on their store with a pinch of salt though.
www.silentpcreview.com - US based site, extremely informative, extremely anal about making things quiet (many people on there find their keyboard, their mouse, their LCD monitor too loud) - but if you want to learn about something I always find it's best to go ask someone who's passionate/fanatical/borderline insane about their subject.

Matt's wrote a lot of stuff so to summerise for him:

"Small = bad air flow. Bigger fan = quieter + higher air flow. Also its a small case with limited upgrade routes for it (one external optical drive port). Graphics will basically not run anything but 2D apps so games are vertually a no no."

If your happy with all that then good stuff. Oh and ill add, dont try running vista because it will kill that machine tbh. XP will run pretty well though

Is the budget £200 because thats all you can spare or because thats all your willing to pay? Im tempted to say you'll be hard pushed to find similar system cheaper.

[pookie]

also wanted to add the fact that you also need to check that you can replace the power supplies /fans in the small pc's. Had an msi mega cube that required a propietary psu and heatsink fan combo.

Well I will have a look at it in the shop I think and double check that it will fit in the space provided when I get home. But yes expandability is not something I worry about now as its just to be a internet browser, word processor, occasional media centre PC. And straight away its more powerful then the machine I am currently running. As I got out of the upgrade obsession path a good few years ago. There's only one IDE so at the moment I will probably slave the DVD of the HD.
The 200 quid is all I'm prepared to pay at the moment as if pushed I might just replace it with a netbook as I haven't even decided yet if its going to run XP or Linux.

Originally Posted by Grinch

Well I will have a look at it in the shop I think and double check that it will fit in the space provided when I get home. But yes expandability is not something I worry about now as its just to be a internet browser, word processor, occasional media centre PC. And straight away its more powerful then the machine I am currently running. As I got out of the upgrade obsession path a good few years ago. There's only one IDE so at the moment I will probably slave the DVD of the HD.
The 200 quid is all I'm prepared to pay at the moment as if pushed I might just replace it with a netbook as I haven't even decided yet if its going to run XP or Linux.

Something like this, perhaps?

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Grinch

Well I will have a look at it in the shop I think and double check that it will fit in the space provided when I get home. But yes expandability is not something I worry about now as its just to be a internet browser, word processor, occasional media centre PC. And straight away its more powerful then the machine I am currently running. As I got out of the upgrade obsession path a good few years ago. There's only one IDE so at the moment I will probably slave the DVD of the HD.
The 200 quid is all I'm prepared to pay at the moment as if pushed I might just replace it with a netbook as I haven't even decided yet if its going to run XP or Linux.

Might be able to help you out Grinchy - I have an older Shuttle PC (the original small PC) but it has a fault - it may be just the PSU, or it may have also taken out the mobo.

I guess you could just connect it up to any PC powersupply and test with that - then if all ok, get a new PSU to replace the busted internal one.

Not sure what I would want for it, but not much is a figure that comes to mind.

That would be handy, I have a number of PSU's laying about I think, what Wattage is it?

Originally Posted by Sudoxe

Something like this, perhaps?

Yes, I remember see those now and having a think that I liked the idea.