I'm gonna be building a few of these and I'm trying to get this all sorted out. This will be generic Desktops used offshore in the oilfield (meaning monkeys will be operating them ) So nothing fancy (just web/email and office apps) is needed but I do want it to be small for transport on the heli. So I'm looking at the mini boxes like the Shuttle stuff, original link didn't work but I was looking at barebone kits on www.newegg.com the ones in the $150-$200'ish range.

My main concerns is when running FC3 what are the best/better mobo chipsets and I would like for them to have built on GFX so as to cut down on cost.

I would love to hear about good/bad/horror stories with any of these brands of boxes or chipsets.

Thanks alot in advance and I look forward to reading your responses,
Bogus

Review the HCL list on this page to see what hardware works best with linux and go with that. You can't miss. See what are your options and cut down the cost.

So by this I should just not get any of them?! none of the form factor stuff is in there that I can see... under mobo's it's all mobo's not chipsets and such.... just wondering if anyone could share on positive or negative experience with chipsets that are in these boxes.

Thanks for the pointer anyhow, I did use it for a few things.

As of now I think the winner is this BioStar IDEQ200N

Any objections/observations?

I've got a Shuttle SN45G running Slackware on an Athlon 2500+. I't got the nforce chipset. Bottom line = no problems at all. It's a great little box, and the only warning I'd have would be to fully understand the lack of expandability inherent in the small form factor machines. Be certain that whatever components you want to connect to it will have a port to connect them to. For example, my Shuttle does not have a printer port. This doesn't matter to me since my printer is connected to another machine, but my point is that you don't want to get surprised after you've laid out the cash that it lacks a port that you need. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Good point... this BioStar doesn't even have serial ports but I really shouldn't need any of these things where they are going... hopefully But thanks for the heads up!