I may be a bit biased, as I build Linux "appliances" out of Mini ITX
boards, but FWIW, here's my take on it...
A VIA CN1300 is 1.3GHz and can take up to 1GB of RAM (which, given
todays prices, you might as well do). It has a CPU fan. There is a 1GHz
version of the board without the fan if you want super quiet.
My favourite place:
http://linitx.com/
Their web site is linked to their stock-control system unlike another
place I used to use, and they keep you informed of order progress, read
your emails in a timely manner and appear to be all-round good guys...
There are many other board solutions - some with faster processors and
sockets for Core2 duo chips too - but these will then push the power
consumption up. My 1GHz boards idle at about 15W with 512MB of RAM and a
128MB flash IDE drive.
See:
http://unicorn.drogon.net/power.jpg
For a 1.5GHz board, have a look at:
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11470
This has a DVI connector too, and the full audio kit, IDE and SATA,
however its "legacy free", so no PS/2 mouse/keyboard or parallel
ports... There are headers for 4 more USB2 ports
The down-side of the really low-power ones is the CPU cache. These are
128KB only, and this might be the thing that slows you down. They don't
have the full compliment of MMX/SSE instructions either, so graphics
crunching might not be "optimal". Saying that, a friend built a couple
of these boxes for a local church youth group (1GHz processor, 1GB RAM
in a wall mount case so it could be screwed to the desk!) and he put XP
on them and is happily running Firefox and OpenOffice on them, so with a
Linux distro you ought to be OK for general day to day use, web browsing,
etc., but don't expect the earth when you go to very busy web sites!
Gordon
