I've set up several Zotac boxes lately. All are Atom-based machines that run completely quiet.
You can put a 2.5" HD inside (I typically drop in a 250G or 500G, whichever is cheaper).
They have a ton of USB ports, so connecting your USB drive will be no problem.
I load Linux on all of them, and they're totally silent in my experience (and SMALL, about 7.5" by 7.5" by 1.5").
You wouldn't even know it's on except a circle on the side glows when it's on and isn't visible when it's off.
The following two devices are barebones, you need to add RAM and a hard drive (or a small SSD like this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233122).
Older Atom 330 system with NVidia ION for $219:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173004
Newer Atom D510 system with NVidia ION2 for $239:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173005
Some people have complained about fan noise from the PSU fan; I've never heard any noise at all but there is a bios update that seems to fix those units with noise issues.
Really just leave it vertical (like the pictures) so the airflow through the case is good and it never even kicks on the fan (that I've seen).
The first supports 4G of DDR3, but the CPU is slow and the DDR3 isn't any faster than the DDR2 on the second.
The second uses next-gen Atom, so it's lower power, but it only supports a single 2G DDR2 RAM stick.
This next device is complete, with 2G RAM and a 160G HD, it's an Atom 330 system and only has 1 RAM slot, so 2G is max:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173001
For a simple NAS box running FreeNAS or OpenFiler, 2G should be plenty, and any small Atom-based box should do a great job.
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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