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Michael B.

Michael B.

Joined on 01/02/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 13
Most Favorable Review

One last thing:

acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server  Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N
acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N

Pros: Read my other review.

Cons: One last thing: this box gets hot fully loaded. It only has one 120mm fan cooling the entire system. I found that reversing the fan seems to help, but I might end up going for a high CFM fan just to make sure this keeps cool.

Overall Review: Read my other review.

Most Critical Review

Ehhh-

Intel BOXD845GVSRL Socket 478 Intel 845GV Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel BOXD845GVSRL Socket 478 Intel 845GV Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Comments: Might as well just go buy a cheap eMachines, as many of their models use this board. I mean, it's.... decent... The only problem I've had with it was RAM. It didn't like the Rosewill 512mb pc2100 stick I threw into it, and it didn't like the pqi 512mb pc2100 stick I put into it either... The only thing it liked that I had around was a pc2100 256mb samsung stick that I pulled out of an eMachine... That's when I noticed that the boards were identical. The only difference that I can tell is that eMachines uses a custom bios that I couldn't get to flash to the more current intel bios (sigh... no cel-d for me in that box as that requires a newer version on the bios...)

Works well

EVERCOOL EC-HPS-810CP 1 ball bearing. Fan Life Expectancy at 25 degree Celsius 35000HR Low profile Intel & AMD CPU cooler
EVERCOOL EC-HPS-810CP 1 ball bearing. Fan Life Expectancy at 25 degree Celsius 35000HR Low profile Intel & AMD CPU cooler

Pros: Makes the proc not catch on fire.

Cons: Nothing so far.

Overall Review: I bought this to cool a Xeon E3-1241v3B in the U-NAS NSC-800 server chassis. It was still a fairly tight fit, but everything worked out fine.

Nice little chassis

ARK IPC-1.5U1525 Black 1.2mm SGCC 1.5U Rackmount Server Case
ARK IPC-1.5U1525 Black 1.2mm SGCC 1.5U Rackmount Server Case

Pros: Small. No rails needed. Has two spaces in the back for DB9 connectors (been a while since I've seen that!). Very sturdy feeling.

Cons: Power LED is blinding =).

Overall Review: This is actually 1.3U, not 1U. Not really that big of an issue in my setup, but it might be for others. As well, even though this is for mini-itx mobos, it uses an SFX power supply. Really nice chassis for a router, and the DB9 slots (coupled with a mobo with a few serial headers) make it easy to use it as a poor-man's cyclade for OoB management of other networking gear in the rack.

One last update!

acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server  Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N
acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N

Pros: See previous review.

Cons: See previous review.

Overall Review: A linux module finally exists to control the HD LEDs, check out mediasmartserverd!

Update!

acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server  Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N
acer Aspire Easystore Tower Intel Atom Processor 230 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB System OS : Microsoft Windows Home Server Network Client OS : Windows Vista / Windows XP AH340-UA230N

Pros: Read my other reviews from 9/26/2009.

Cons: Read my other reviews from 9/26/2009.

Overall Review: It was kind of a work out to get linux to run on this box. First of all, a video output is a MUST. I got a cheap pci express x1 card that works ok, more ambitious folks can build a video output using the onboard header. The bios on this thing is very sparse. It does give you the option to switch boot media, but it would keep trying to boot from the drives even after I made change to USB and whatnot. I had to physically remove the drives before it would boot off of a different media. There is no option to enable the hardware raid, even though the chipset supports it.. One neat thing that the board has is a built in 256mb usb flash drive, perfect for a mini distro of linux, or in my case, /boot so I can boot off of a software raid. There's a jumper on the motherboard to make the flash drive the primary boot device (otherwise you'd have to hit the system rescue button to boot from it, as that's where the installer for WHS is kept by default). Can't get the disk lights to work in linux =(.