VESA screws f. M350 enclosure | |
| 30.10.2009
Very useful and if it was for the technical aspects only, it would get 5 stars. However charging almost 5 Euro for 4 small screws that cost probably less than 10 cent to make is rather cheeky. BTW: The onces I received were not exactly like the picture above, In fact they were better. They had no slit for a screwdriver but grooves for tool-less installation. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Nice and perfect addition to the M350 if you want to hide the box behind your screen. Mine didn't have slots for fastening with a screwdriver but grooves to fasten them with your fingers. Unfortunately the price tag is rather steep. Come on, 5 Euro for 4 tiny screws? Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Nice and perfect addition to the M350 if you want to hide the box behind your screen. Mine didn't have slots for fastening with a screwdriver but grooves to fasten them with your fingers. Unfortunately the price tag is rather steep. Come on, 5 Euro for 4 tiny screws? |
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RAM 1024MB DDR-II 800 | |
| 30.10.2009
Simple straight forward DDR-II RAM. Just bought it with the motherboard. One less thing to waste time on. Even the price is pretty much the same as everywhere else. So no need to hunt around for a bargain. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Works as expected. You can probably use any other module with the same specs (except for those with huge coolers) but the price is good and it is one less thing that you need to worry about. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Works as expected. You can probably use any other module with the same specs (except for those with huge coolers) but the price is good and it is one less thing that you need to worry about. |
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ZOTAC ION ITX A-E (with integrated Atom 2x 1.6Ghz CPU, Onboard PSU, WLAN) [FANLESS] | |
| 30.10.2009
Great board with everything you'll ever want in a silent but powerful video playback system. For my application as a HTPC with an M350 box it simply rocks! Sure it is nor the cheapest board around but in my experience if you buy cheap you often buy twice. Minor criticism: Very bright blue LED on the bottom side of the board. A little annoying at night. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Just the thing you'll want to get if you are building a silent HTPC with HD capabilities. It has everything you'll ever need and more. I particularly like the fact that it has an electrical as well as an optical digital sound output port. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Just the thing you'll want to get if you are building a silent HTPC with HD capabilities. It has everything you'll ever need and more. I particularly like the fact that it has an electrical as well as an optical digital sound output port. |
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M350 Mini-ITX enclosure | |
| 30.10.2009
Good build quality. Very versatile. Very rugged. competitive price. Not so great in terms of maintenance friendliness. E.g. to put a board in you probably can't slide it in from the side because there are small ledges on all sides. So almost invariably ypu have to put the board in from above and in order to do this you have to remove the small front PCB with the two USB ports because the PCB's connector sticks into the main compartment. Speaking of which. The tiny PCB is secured by 4(!) screws. In a Dell or HP system there would at most be one screw so that service would be much faster and less error prone. Still once the system is set up you'll love that box. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Brilliant case. Very solid build quality. Lots of holes allow passive cooling and the two frontal USB ports allow to hide a bluetooth receiver, a wireless keyboard receiver or a UMTS stick without shielding its antenna. The only grief I have is not with the case itself but with the rather high price tag on the additional mounting material. Update from :2009-11-10 10:59 Brilliant case. Very solid build quality. Lots of holes allow passive cooling and the two frontal USB ports allow to hide a bluetooth receiver, a wireless keyboard receiver or a UMTS stick without shielding its antenna. The only grief I have is not with the case itself but with the rather high price tag on the additional mounting material. Update from :2009-11-16 13:24 Excellent case. Good air flow for zero noise systems without fans. Got one of those for a ZOTAC ION board and one for the Intel half-height D945GSEJT. Now there's even a PCI riser card for the D945GSEJT. (I'll have to get one of those.) |
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Intel D945GSEJT Half-Height (with integrated Atom 1.6Ghz CPU, Johnstown) [FANLESS] | |
| 16.11.2009
Cute board. I use it in a low energy Linux server/PVR. Only grief is the SO-DIMM memory slot instead of a normal one and the difficulty to find a 44pin IDE cable to connect a 2.5" HDD to the board. However it has two SATA ports and a mini PCIe, so no lack of connectivity. Finding a Realtek Phy on an Intel board was somehow disappointing (and causes some problems in kernels < 2.6.30) but all in all its very good value. |
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