a good desktop for kubuntu

[David Fletcher]

On Saturday 07 February 2009 22:30:50 Knapp wrote:
> > system runs almost cold and almost silent.
> >
> > Just my opinion.
> >
> > Dave
>
> I took my hard drives and hung them in the dvd slots with rubber
> bands. This made them silent too. Before that the HD used the metal
> sides like a sounding board. Watch out the rubber gets old fast in
> there. Something like twisted string might be better.
>

The Antec case I chose uses rubber grommets and special hard drive mounting 
screws for just this purpose :-)

I took the trouble to mount the hard drive in the mini server case I designed 
for myself on rubber shock mounts. Unfortunately the 1U ATX power supply has 
a 40mm fan which more than compensates :-(

Getting hold of low power, energy efficient, silent power supplies for such 
projects is a bit of a problem. What I have noticed, though, is that a 
company called Kontron has mini-ITX boards with a single wide range DC 
input - no need for an ATX unit. An off the shelf, highly efficient, fanless, 
switch mode unit from RS or Farnell would do the job very nicely. I suspect 
that these boards will be more expensive, but I might be tempted to 
experiment sometime.

Dave