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Either way, assuming I could find a suitable case (one that doesn't have neon or anything, and has the right venting to run this thing fanless), I'm kind of leaning towards a EPIA solution right now.


I would back you up on this inclination; I'm running a VIA EPIA M 10000 in a Morex 3677 black case for my firewall (SmoothWall). The motherboard still has a fan on board since I haven't yet felt the need to replace it with a Zalman Silent Northbridge Cooler (as I've done on my gaming machine since its chipset fan decided to die slowly, horribly and with the most irritating amount of noise possible).

Of course, this case is probably a bit small for what you want; you might need to go for something a bit larger, like the Morex 2699 in Anonymous Beige or Stealth Black. A word of caution, though - I found I had to put a 2200uf capacitor across the input leads of the power supply (inside the box) to provide enough start current for the board to start up. But since this power supply is more than capable of powering the board and two drives (a standard full-height CD and a 3.5" drive, when I was initially installing SmoothWall) and is completely silent, I think it's just the ticket.

I look on the extra features of the VIA boards - the video out, the gobs of spare processing power - as just futureproofing. It's much better to get something like this that's relatively new and have it last for years, than to continually have to scrounge parts for your ageing 286 because you need another ISA card for more drives. Anyway, it's up to you, of course.

Hope this helps and that parts are available,

Paul
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