Re: [LAU] Box under £400

Hmmm, I thought I can defer the putting-it-together part to my next life... But I see there are possible ways to get a box assembled, e.g. http://www.avadirect.com/mini-pc-configurator.asp?PRID=23280 (boiling down to under $500 when changing some items).

Coming from the Mac world, I'm just worried that some parts don't play nicely together, plus wondering if all of the components will be supported by Linux? How does the Atom compare against SandyBridge in heavy audio applications?

In the meantime, I figured that the Z-Box ID82 would be the price and performance range, it seems though that they are just on the market, so probably no one has used them in production, yet.

best, .h.h.

On 30 May 2012, at 16:57, Egor Sanin wrote:

> If you are not adverse to buying components and building a system, I
> can't recommend a fanless cpu/motherboard combo from Intel enough:
> Intel Desktop Board D525MW
>
>
> A little underpowered (1.8 GHz) but fits the RAM spec you noted. I
> have one of these and it's really awesome. You can get one for under
> $100 here in Canada. You've got a PCI slot, so stick in a firewire
> card and you're good to go. It's also tiny, 170 x 170 mm.
>
> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-d525mw.html
>
> On 5/30/12, Sciss <contact@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>> hi,
>>
>> I don't know if this is the best place to ask, as it's more of a hardware
>> question...
>>
>> I will need to get a good + cheap + reliable machine to sound installations.
>> I can invest _max_ £400 (EUR 500) and I need to get hold of the machine
>> latest by August. Unless a miracle happens and a new Mac Mini model is
>> announced, dropping the prices of current models by at least £150, I am
>> looking for something comparable of the i5 2.3 GHz Mac Min, Linux based.
>>
>> It can't be desktop size, it really should be a portable thing, size factor/
>> weight not much larger than first gen Mac Mini.
>>
>> The nettops seem all underpowered for computation expensive realtime apps. I
>> came across this : http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-giga-id72-plus.html -- but
>> seems like a new model or so, can't find any retailers or pricing info, at
>> least not in the UK.
>>
>> Minimum specs would be i3 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB HD. Will be audio only, so
>> I guess graphics card doesn't matter. And of course, it needs to run Linux
>> audio -- my stuff will use SuperCollider and various things on the Java VM.
>>
>> How about audio interfaces? I guess there is no chance I can connect a MOTU
>> 828 Mk II to any of these boxes? The Z-Box looks interesting saying that it
>> has 8-channels digital audio output via HDMI. I have no clue how to get that
>> to 8 analog line signals, but maybe there is a cheap way? Will there be a
>> problem getting Jack to talk to this kind of interface?
>>
>> Thanks for your suggestions, I hope it's not off topic!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> .h.h.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Linux-audio-user mailing list
>> Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
>>

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Wed May 30 20:15:03 2012