Here is the link to MSI system: link

Just add a stick of laptop RAM ($8 AR for 1GB RAM) and a (Sandisk 8GB) CF card (or 2.5"/3.5" HD), you are ready to go. You can have 3 Sandisk 8GB cards (30MB/sec read/write speed) for under $11!

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Good basic PC for internet surfing. I am going to buy for to build a NAS. The only thing missing is RAID. But I am ok without it.

Remember, RAM + Atom + 945G + HD eats less than 30W at peak link, not 62W claimed by Tomshardware. In this case, MSI is using a nettop setup basically. And MSI Wind PC (not barebone) eats 35W at peak for whole system. So it is good option for NAS, and its price is lower than many NAS, close to the famous Dlink DNS-323.

CPU Supported CPU Type Intel 1.6GHz Atom processor on board
FSB 533MHz
Chipset
North Bridge Intel 945GC
South Bridge ICH7
Memory Supported
Memory slot 1 x 200Pin
Memory Type Supported DDR2 400/533
Max Memory Supported 2GB
Expansion Slots
Other 1 x CF card slot
Storage
Serial ATA 2 x SATAII 300
Graphics
Onboard Video Intel GMA 950
Audio
Onboard Audio Realtek ALC858
Channel 8-CH
Communications
First LAN Realtek 8111C(10/100/1000Mbps)
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Extension Bays
3.5" Internal bays 1
5.25" External bays 1
Front Panel Ports
Front USB 2
Front Audio Ports 2 jacks
Card Reader SD/MMC/MS/XD 4-in-1 Card Reader
Back Panel Ports
VGA 1 x D-Sub
Rear USB 4
RJ45 1
Rear Audio Ports 6 jacks
Power Supply
Power Supply External 65W Power Adapter with Active PFC
Physical SPEC
Dimensions 11.8" x 9.5" x 2.6"

does it have an AGP slot?

How much power this uses? Is this going to be a good thin client PC for Magic Jack?

msvista said:How much power this uses? Is this going to be a good thin client PC for Magic Jack?Atom CPU is 4w TDP and MSI says the unit draws "less than 40w at full-speed operation".

valeadmagnet said:nice little system, would make a very good always on NAS box, print & media server or firewall router.

I work in the storage industry and you are better of with using the Operating System's software RAID since you are not tied into the RAID chips' filesystem and the performance difference would be almost irrelevant for home and small business use.

for $129 delivered you get a dual core system with much more horsepower and expandability but consumes much more power.

Is software raid more likely to fail and/or harder to recover if it does?

eugovector said:valeadmagnet said:nice little system, would make a very good always on NAS box, print & media server or firewall router.

I work in the storage industry and you are better of with using the Operating System's software RAID since you are not tied into the RAID chips' filesystem and the performance difference would be almost irrelevant for home and small business use.

for $129 delivered you get a dual core system with much more horsepower and expandability but consumes much more power.

Is software raid more likely to fail and/or harder to recover if it does?

Software RAID is as stable as the OS - since it is just the filesystem even the OS could crash and you could still recover the Volume Group and logical volumes. It isn't difficult to replace a dead disk, or restore. Another nice feature of OS software RAID is it's probably much better documented and there is a lot more support out there than any one chip vendors implementation.

Although I prefer Windows, there are a bunch of pre-built Linux distros that are made for simple deployment of home server and NAS work, like FreeNAS, KnoppMyth, Wowza, MythDora, GeeXboX, MythBuntu, and OpenFiler. My favorite distro is DSL but it would require more tweaking to get what you want.

Marlin1975 said:As kinda said this system is not for gaming or high end use. Its for low power read a e-mail and do basic stuff. The onboard video will NOT decode HD video so a HTPC for most is also out.

Now if you want low power, not ultra-low like this, then look at some of the low power dual core AMD chips with a 790GX motherboard if you want to make a HTPC. The chips are pretty cheap and the new 790GX motherboards on-board video will decode HD video.

Pretty sure even the lesser(?) 780 chipset does HD also.

I am surprised, so far, nobody tried to compare with Asus Eee PC BOX

http://www.jr.com/asus/pe/ASU_EBXB202BKX/

Marlin1975 said:dwit said:Marlin1975 said:As kinda said this system is not for gaming or high end use. Its for low power read a e-mail and do basic stuff. The onboard video will NOT decode HD video so a HTPC for most is also out.

Now if you want low power, not ultra-low like this, then look at some of the low power dual core AMD chips with a 790GX motherboard if you want to make a HTPC. The chips are pretty cheap and the new 790GX motherboards on-board video will decode HD video.

Pretty sure even the lesser(?) 780 chipset does HD also.

Yea the 780G also does HD decoding but the 790GX has a faster core speed and also 64mb or 128mb of sideport memory (on-board video memory). Also all the 790GX have the newwer SB750 southbridge.

For the price of those AMD 780 & 790 chipset motherboards you could compare the
Intel G33 & G35 to the AMD 780
and the Intel G43 and G45 to the AMD 790GX


ajainy said:I am surprised, so far, nobody tried to compare with Asus Eee PC BOX

http://www.jr.com/asus/pe/ASU_EBXB202BKX/

big cost difference

I am looking for something to build a RAID NAS box myself. This would make a good NAS box with RAID 0 or 1. But would seem like RAID 5 (software or hardware) would be a complication. From the description, I can't tell if it has ANY expansion slots (PCI, ISA) to put in a RAID controller or any controller to add more drives. Then comes the problem of powering the additional drives ....

On the topic of RAID 5, anyone know of some inexpensive HW RAID 5 controller cards that are widely supported in Linux? I was looking at the LSI MegaRAID i4 (515 series?) but it seems like it's an aging card and many distros (ie: Fedora 8/9, RedHat EL4/5) have dropped built-in support for the card?

-d