In fact I've given up on mini-itx altogether since I discovered that a Dell Vostro 200 Slim case machine is actually quieter than my T2, hugely more powerful and can be had for £179 + P&P + tax. My next quiet server will be one of these.
I ended up with a Vostro 200 Slim machine, 1.6GHz C2D, 2GB RAM, 250GB Disk, DVDRW new in box for £150 inc. £200+ cheaper than a Mini-ITX SN 1GHz, Chenbro Case, DVDRW and RAM (before hard drives).
As the hardware goes, the case is good quality, and everything is quite smartly laid out inside. There is space for two hard drives which are quick release, one empty (external) 3.25" bay and the 5.25" bay with the DVDRW in it. 2x PCI, 1x PCIeX1 and 1x PCIeX16 all Low Profile only. There are 4x SATA ports inside, no IDE. Ports on the back are all USB so no Serial, no PS/2 and no Firewire. Its half way to being 'Legacy Free' - Dell still find the need to put a floppy connector on the board and no DVI on the back.
The box itself is relatively quiet. Has to be said its not as quiet as my old full tower monster which has 120mm fans and a Thermalright heatsink, but its not bad. Always difficult to describe, but its not amazingly quiet. If you stand the box up, there is a fan at the top near the back and one on the left side (CPU). There is no active cooling in the front for hard drives, but there is space and big vents there so its not too bad. Adding another disk in the 3.5" bay for RAID 5 might be pushing it, but I'll monitor temperatures for a little while and know for sure. The PSU is labelled 250W and only has 3x SATA connectors on short cables in total, so this may need some light hacking for another drive too.
I put in a couple of big Western Digital 'Green Power' hard drives - these are really nice drives, the quietest ones I've ever come across (I'd say they were totally silent) and barely warm after running for a few hours. Pretty outstanding, I'd really recommend them unless you want very high performance.
I wanted to install the OS on a 4GB Compactflash using a SATA-CF adapter which I bought. There is only a 50% chance that this device is detected on boot which makes it pretty useless. When it is detected by the computer it seems to work well. I gave up on this.
Linux isn't totally straightforward. Knoppix will not boot from the SATA DVD drive. Ubuntu Server 8.04 will install without much problem and then hang on boot. Reading around it seems to be a problem with the Vostro and 2.6.24. Reinstalling a minimal install of an earlier version and dist-upgrading (holding back the kernel) is probably the path of least resistance.
Fun and games.
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