Shuttle X27D Intel 945GC Mini / Booksize Barebone System

Pros: Small, low power (32 watts in my case), fast enough for all normal desktop tasks, and with a little help, nearly silent. I love this little PC! I can leave it running 24/7. It serves as a desktop, NAS, and it's collecting data from my weather station and uploading it to web.

Cons: Stock fan is noisier than it needs to be, and it actually heats up the processor!

Overall Review: Here's what I did to make the X27D really quiet and cool: 1) turn NB heatsink 180 so fan blows away from processor 2) add a 40x10 SilenX fan to top of processor heatsink 3) install Zalman Fan Mate 2 on stock fan and adjust rpm to 3500. Running Prime95 for 30 minutes, case temps peaked at 52C, core temps at 56C, both better than stock setup. Total mod cost less than $20!

Pros: - good built quality - extremely small factor - sleek look Added 2 GB ram, DVD drive, and 64 SSD - installation was quick and painless. Installed Ubuntu 8.1 - everything works as a charm - using as a Linux based Media Center PC and streaming server.

Cons: - not competely silent (it's not by any means noisy - less than 19dB, but I expected a bit more) - no PCI port (can't really expand)

Pros: Small...Quiet...Fast

Cons: None

Overall Review: I bought this unit to make a small server for our home network and we have very little room in our wire closet. I added a 250 GB SATA HD and a slim SATA DVD. The unit is really quiet, runs cool and performs as expected. I have loaded Ubuntu Server 8.04 as a SAMBA & Web Server. I am also running it headless with administration done via WebMin. It is a great unit and came with all of the cables and adapters that were needed for the HD and DVD. It fits our needs perfectly.

Pros: Good cpu, small, quiet. Runs Win 7.

Cons: Poor construction.

Overall Review: Bought it for a kiosk project, and noticed right off the poor fit of the case top. No big deal, but then the dvd hatch broke the first time I opened it. Incredibly dinky hinges. The external power supply started intermittently shutting down after installation, and I determined it was an issue with the AC input socket. Didn't want to wait around for an RMA, so having nothing to lose I (literally) cracked it apart and soldered the numerous cold joints I found. Ok since then.

Pros: Very small, almost silent, dual core atom and nice fit and finish.

Cons: Flimsy front access panels, runs a little warm, no wireless card or provision for it and power button is difficult to operate unless you use your finger nail.

Overall Review: This little computer runs amazing well. I was expecting it to be a little faster. But it is fast enough for light office use. The size is great and the noise is almost inaudible. I coupled it with a Hitachi 250gb SATA drive, slim optical drive and a 2gb stick of ram. Runs like a champ with XP. I would recommend to any one needing a basic system. Forget about playing games on it. My biggest problem with it is the power button and the front access doors. I cannot see these little doors lasting very long. I would have been better (albeit uglier) to just have a flat front with no doors. The power button is on the corner and you have to use your finger nail to operate it. The unit is so light weight, when you push the power button, the whole unit slides across the table. Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. But still annoying.

Pros: It's small quite and fast plus it has the DVI out that I need. The video quality is more than good enough for streaming video even on HD quality. I was happily surprised to find four CPU's show up in the task manager, I guess this thing is hyper threaded. In short it's the best and most affordable piece of hardware that I've seen in two years for a mythtv frontend server.

Cons: None this is everything I could have wanted and a lot faster than I expected.

Overall Review: The fan is really quite but it would be nice if there was a no fan needed option. But I haven't seen that anywhere.

Pros: Xubuntu 9.10 runs flawlessly; Seems to be pretty quiet so far, the wife doesn't complain about the noise. Well priced for what it provides. Makes a great little HTPC to attach to the back of a wall mounted TV, a tad larger than a Mac Mini.

Cons: Video is choppy when watching high-quality video, especially Hulu in high quality mode. Most Internet videos play flawlessly. I doubt it would deliver viewable HD.

Overall Review: Running Xubuntu 9.10 on a 4GB OCZ Rally flash drive with 1GB G.Skill DDR2 533 RAM. Installs in no time, Hulu app installs with ease.

Pros: This is a pretty capable computer that looks good below the TV and plays everything except HD smoothly on a 46" LCD TV via DVI and audio cables. It is also reasonably speedy as a web browser and PLEX player. Installed Mac OS X via iATKOS 7 with a minimum of fuss and am running 10.5.7 quite smoothly. I didn't need any bits or pieces from other hacks as seemed to be necessary with earlier versions of iATKOS. It boots quickly and OS X sees it as a quad-core computer. Sleep, some components of Bonjour, and Screen Sharing *from* another computer are the only functions I've found that don't seem to work; I haven't tested Sound In. I don't miss any of that and do not expect to upgrade the OS, although it might be theoretically possible to do so.

Cons: This was an interesting Hackintosh project but it is not a great value for HTPC purposes compared to a used or refurb Mac Mini. Unlike some other "net-top" machines, this uses primarily notebook parts that many might not have lying around. In addition to the $180 CPU, I added a $60 2.5" SATA notebook HD (desktop won't fit), $45 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200), a $35 LITE-ON Slim Internal SATA CD/DVD Burner, a $20 Rosewill RNX-G1 USB 2.0 Wireless Dongle, a clumsy but clever $45 Lenovo Mini Wireless Keyboard w/ Trackball N5901 (not from NewEgg), and a $5 Scythe SY124020L 40mm Case Fan to replace the slightly noisy stock fan. No additional cables were necessary beyond the DVI & audio to the TV. (I did use an old-style external IDE DVD to load iATKOS before I got the internal burner.) For about $100 more I could have purchased an already-complete Mac Mini with a smaller form factor that would be upgradable to newer versions of OS X. But that wasn't really the point.