osiris

So guys - quick thoughts on the ION 330?

Could I get a self-built system for around about the same money that is just as quiet do you think?

DuckieHo

Why ION? You don't need the GPU...

Just get an Intel BOXD945GCLF2 or any other basic Atom 330 + 945. They cost $60-80USD.

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osiris

Honestly? For the sake of it being reviewed as quiet/silent. From looking at most Mini-ITX cases for sale, reviews have said PSU's are noisy

the_beast

Any low power board+cpu, plus a PicoPSU will also be silent & fanless.

But fanless is not really a good way to go in a build, especially a small one. Try and find a case that takes a standard psu, and get a decent psu (Corsair make some great units as do Seasonic, most of Antec's stuff is good, PC Power & Cooling and Enermax also well regarded), and the fan in it will effectively be inaudible for most loads, but the air it moves will cool the whole rest of the system.

Fanless is a nice idea, but it is actually really hard to keep things cool with no forced airflow at all. A single low speed fan is essentially inaudible but makes a huge difference to cooling.

mazza-

having read most of the posts, i think that the simple build i have running my website is good enough.
specs as follow: AMDragoN;
AMD-DragoN:
AMD Sempron 3400+ 2.2GHz
1GB DDR PC3200
ATI Radeon 9550/X1050 Series 128MB
Samsung DVD-RW Multi Player
Seagate 80GB 7200.12 PATA
Made for Intel P4 400W PSU
GA-K8M800
Windows Vista Ultimate X32

*this used to be my dads main pc until i built him 2 new computers; 1 HTPC with full HDMI, and a voip PC which can if i wanted play games well with a 9400GT 1GB HDMI (hey it was cheap at the time and works great!)

*dads pc that now does VOIP is:
Michal-VOIP-PC:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500
ASUS P5PL/EPU
2GB (1 x 2GB) Kingston DDR2 800MHz Non-ECC CL5
Gainward 9400GT HDMI 1GB
HD Realtek Audio
PATA DVD-RW drive
Cooler Master Elite 360
Cooler Master 420W OEM
Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA
21 in 1 multimedia card reader
Windows XP Home Edition SP3

this runs everything thrown at it, so know that $600AUD will get you a very good PC if built with intel

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osiris

mazza - My server was pretty much the same, but an Intel Celeron D 2.8 and no graphics card (onboard FTW!) and W2k3 w/ Exch2k3 and AD etc. What did you run on yours?

ComGuards

If you want to learn, you probably don't want to be running Exchange 2003 on top of an Active Directory domain controller - it's not a recommended Microsoft configuration. Plus, you'll probably want a second domain controller so that you can be more familiar with multi-DC scenarios.

You might want to consider investing in a more potent system and running a virtualization hypervisor that gives you more options to play with.