I'm considering buying a new PC and one of these Shuttle / iCube - mainly because they look good and are small and space saving. There appears to be a big range and I've read mixed comments about over heating or noise, but also great things about there look & performance. Has anyone got one ? Which model ? What do people think about them ? My main activities : downloading, uploading, no gaming; some development, playing movies, dvd's ect
I don't think you'll have much of a problem with heat since you're not going to be gaming. They make good media centre style PCs and will handle most tasks easily. Noise is probably the thing you'll need to handle if you're going to be using it in the livingroom etc. But for general day to day use without looking too much for upgrading they seem fine.
It depends on what one you're going for. I don't know if you've looked around, but check out SFF Tech (SFF=Small FormFactor[/url]. I'd look at a low-end Socket 754 (Athlon64/Sempron64) model, or an LGA775 and slap a Celeron D in that. Shuttle's Zen series PC's take out the power supply and have an external power brick instead. Just remember, you'll have to buy the CPU, RAM, drives, and any add-in cards you want (like a TV-tuner).
