I needs to be as low as it can reasonable be. In other words, not an
800 psu like so many computers have today. I want the whole thing
drawing under 150. But lower is better, hence I don't need to specify.
That's not too hard, if you buy the cheapest system Dell
sells today, it'll be under 150 and isn't even particularly
engineered towards low power. Even so, supposing the PSU is
150W, it is better to have a lot of margin, be drawing 50W
from a 150W PSU rather than 120W, particularly if there's
limited airflow and/or high ambient temp, the PSU will last
longer. If moderate temp and good active cooling (merely
meaning a fan somewhere even if low RPM, and appropriately
located chassis intake or exhaust vents), it may not matter
so much.
Again, I want it as small as possible, smaller is better. SBC sounds
good, sure. I don't have a definition of "what my case will be".
Then it's a bit pointless to go for something much smaller
than the case you end up using, will accomodate, true? That
is, unless you're building one from scratch and if that is
the situation, you may or may not benefit from any one
dimension of a board being smaller. For example, the
cheapest thing I linked last time (IIRC) was a PCChips
M789CG @ Newegg, and it's only a couple dozen mm longer than
most of the EPIAs. Whether you could exploit two dozen mm or
not depends on what else is being stuffed into same case.
I don't care. Sure, notebook is fine.
I'm only asking because from your initial specs, there are
too many choices, and you didn't specify the budget or how
important size was, how much of a premium it was worth for
slight size reduction... since the smallest SBCs are even
lower performance and rise in price quickly. $1000 might be
a typical price-point.
http://www.gms4sbc.com/products/product_pages/modular/p60x/p60x.html
As stated in the original post, it doesn't need good video
capabilities. I don't care about cache and memory throughput.
Ok, but then I wonder why you don't care?
My point is, most people think of very low power or SBC
systems in terms of what a desktop can do. You made a
comment about a PII or Celeron 500 recently, but for some
things either of these CPUs will be MUCH faster than a SBC,
if you chose one with very low cache or memory throughput.
Ok good to know, thanks. I'm shooting for something near a pII, as
stated.
Some other architecture would be similar "on average" but
that average could be substantially higher or lower
performance in multiple areas.
In other words, if it were as useful to know what desktop
CPU you'd have liked to to be equivalent to on average, I
would have asked that instead. If you can't resolve past a
PII for a desktop you can only use a PII desktop, or far
overshoot the mark just be sure you're covered, which means
the Pentium Mobile platform.
That one looks really good thanks very much
Depends on your needs... It's larger than it might need be
due to having the PCI slot, the card slots, and is going to
be less tolerant of small, low airflow chassis because they
cheaped out and used electrolytic capacitors. On the other
hand, in past years you couldn't get anywhere near this much
functionality at this size, for this price, it is a great
value for some uses. The Via 600MHz CPU is significantly
slower than a PII-400 or Celeron 500.
