Cheap chip chirp (original) (raw)
March 8 2011, 21:43
One for the geeks among my friends:
I want to build a system that (a) runs Linux reasonably easily, (b) uses less than 10 watts, and (c) costs less than 100 euros.
So far my fairly-extensive searching has led me to conclude 'pick any two'. Is there anything that actually sits in the sweet spot and satisfies all three?
Other criteria (in roughly decreasing order of priority):
- Fanless
- 100 Mb/s Ethernet (maybe even gigabit)
- Enough CPU and memory to run a VPN, basic daemons, login sessions, small Web server, possibly a BitTorrent client
- Relatively easy to get going—I'm not really interested in buggering around with the thing for its own sake
Any ideas? My best contender so far is the delightfully-named ACME Systems FOX Board, but even that costs at least 150 euros by the time you've bought useful gizmoes like a charger. I'm mildly biased in favour of x86 setups but, while you can buy a cheap one for peanuts, they all seem to be either over 30 watts, while the properly low-power ones like the Via C7 ULV chips are all much more expensive.