Cheap, silent and not very powerful ... ideas?

[DaKid]

I'm wanting to build an uber-cheap server computer. It will be running linux and hosting my website so just apache/tomcat/mysql/etc running on it ... no big loads and probably minimal bandwidth (I'm not very popular you see ).

Ideally it would be a shuttle, but I do have a full tower I wouldn't mind using if I needed to save money (but I reckon the PSU would need replacing anyway as it'd be too noisy).

You can see from the requirements that the spec can be very low, and I would probably have to include a KVM switch (2 or even 3 port) in there to hook into my existing Kb/mouse/monitor setup.

The prime factor has got to be silence ... ideally I'd like fully passive cooling but I don't want to pay through the nose for anything.

Can someone give me an idea of the budget I'm looking at? Could I squeeze it in under £300 or is that impossible?

[-mb-]

Well, do you have a cheap, quiet power supply for that tower? If not, you will want a single 120mm fan Fortron 350W job like this (£30): http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...31&GroupID=505
Edit: Yes, now I have read what you said I can see that you will need this. You can't buy towers with this power supply, and I reckon this lot will be quieter than a shuttle - quiet hdd and just two fans...

Then all you need is a nice quiet Seagate 7200.7 hard drive, 80Gb (£46):
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...00&GroupID=205

A nice quiet (passive Northbridge cooling) Asus cheap socket A motherboard (£38):
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...81&GroupID=526
Model: A7V600-X

A nice quiet ultra-cheap passively cooled graphics card: £28
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...862&GroupID=27
Model: Rdeon 9200SE 64Mb

And some memory and a processor:
AthlonXP 2000+ £42: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...733&GroupID=34
256Mb Corsair Value DDR266 £30:
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...615&GroupID=56

Probably a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive:
Sony 52x32x52x16x £28: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...651&GroupID=41

That comes to £242.

If you add in OEM Windows XP home at around £60 you get a reasonable £300 PC. Edit: Yes, now I have read what you said (again ) I can now suggest a £242 computer, since you are running Linux...


Hope this helps.

[DaKid]

Thanks

How about passive cooling for the CPU? One of them flower thingies? Would that be ok with that CPU?