Top posting because I have nothing specific to reply to...

I built a NAS box over the summer. It's very quiet with a very small 
footprint. Its hardware was cheap, and is capable of more than being a 
NAS (it's somewhat comparable to a netbook in "horsepower").

Here's what I did. Step one, find an Atom CPU/motherboard combo on 
newegg. They run at about $60. I got this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186195&cm_re=atom-_-13-186-195-_-Product

It does the job, my only annoyance so far is that the BIOS stops booting 
and waits for input if a keyboard and mouse aren't plugged in, so I 
can't reboot remotely (shutting down? No problem!). From there, go to 
"Browse More Combos" and start picking out your hardware. This deal 
looks nice (in fact, it's exactly what I have).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.419871

 From there, all you need is a power supply, memory, a hard drive, and 
whatever periphials you decide that you need. My NAS box has 1G of RAM 
and two 1TB hard drives, it came out to about $250. If this sounds like 
too much work, then I suggest this.

http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=91

That particular box is in use at my mom's CPA firm by the receptionist. 
It's a really great computer, and system76 is a very good company.

Hope I helped!

On 08/27/2010 04:39 PM, AZ Pete wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I currently have a linux box that I use to serve MP3s, Videos, etc. as 
> well as storing backups of emails and documents.
> Basically it's serving as a file storage box.  However, I need to 
> replace this box as it's starting to fail (old hardware).
>
> What I want to replace it with is a small footprint, ultra quiet PC of 
> some kind. Since this box just stores files it doesn't need much in 
> the way of CPU horsepower.  But the main thing I want is for it to be 
> quiet. I'm tired of listening to fan noise and hard drive hum in my 
> office (relocating it somewhere else in the house isn't viable).
>
> My thoughts are that it wouldn't even need a large hard drive 
> installed, since I currently use an external USB 1.5Tb drive (which is 
> completely silent) to store all of said files.
>
> Does anyone have recommendations for such an animal?
> Quiet is the main engineering requirement here, horsepower secondary. 
> Cheap is good too!
>
> Thanks for all your help!
> Peter
>
>
>
>
>
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