I want a low power, quiet computer to use as a frontend. What are my choices?
Probably the best two choices are the Mac Mini and computers based around the mini-ITX form factor. The Mac Mini is Apple’s small form factor computer. It has the benefit of looking extremely nice and being extremely small. While it does have a fan, this is generally regarded to be so quiet that it is not an issue. Power consumption is low: Tom’s Hardware quotes 28W while playing DVDs. The Mini can run either Mac OS X or linux (using Apple’s Bootcamp or another virtualization system). Both the backend and frontend can run under either OS. The mini-ITX systems are another small factor computer. They are not quite as small as the Mac Mini, but still pretty tiny and again they are usually low power which is good for any computer that’s going to be left on all the time. They come with a range of processor speeds (between 600MHz to 1.6GHz and beyond, with single or dual core configurations) although the processing power is often than would be available with a modern Mac Mini. With the lower
