Anyone interested in a totally fanless system for general-purpose computing (i.e. no gaming or heavy image processing) might be interested in this new $92 mini-itx case with external power supply. The case is fanless, the external power supply is fanless, and if you put the 600Mhz Epia-M6000 board in, then the motherboard is fanless, too. This case is newly available and is designed to work with the new Epia-M boards from Via.

Note that the case apparently requires a slim CDROM and, if you put a CDROM in it, then the RAM must be "low-profile" in order to fit.

http://www.caseoutlet.com/case/2699/CS-2699.html

They'll also sell it as a bare-bones system, too.

David Flanagan

How cool would the hard drive be without the two 40mm fans at the rear? It looks like there's decent room around the HD. And with the vent right there on the side you could slap on U-channel heatsinks. This case would fit in pretty well with other home theater gear. If VIA would just release an EPIA-M with video inputs and a full-clock floating-point C3, you could make yourself a very slick Ogg/PVR server. :¬]

why can't somebody just develop a cheap external powersupply you could buy separately. 100W would do just fine.

There are. You know, like the ones that comes with notebooks and such? Search for AC/DC power supplies on Google for a whole bunch of them. Of course, actually using them may require some electronics knowledge... But the power supplies are out there.

Ducky -- when I searched the web for power supplies, I found a whole lot for electronic hobbyists, but found that it was quite hard to find ones designed for computers, with ATX connectors, etc. Also (you may know this) the AC adaptor brick is only the first part of the picture. It delivers 12V DC (for example), but you then need a DC-DC converter board that goes inside the case and converts that 12V to the various voltages required by a computer mainboard and drives.

d_kay -- I did find a couple of manufacturers, though not as cheap as I would like.
http://www.dc2dc.com makes a relatively expensive one for minii-itx and they are apparently working on a 100W external supply for beefier computers.

See my post here:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com//viewtopic.php?t=2864

for info about the external 55W power supply I ended up buying