I want a quiet PC. What should I look for?

"Extracts from the kernel-panic general list"

Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr. suggests:

What you are describing is a Via EPIA motherboard. Choose the ME (EM?) -600 (6000?) and a wall-wart AC-DC converter. I have 3 of them. They work fine and the MPEG decoder accelerator driver has been reverse engineered.

Available at Fry's for $129 for motherboard with lots of integrated peripherals and the processor.

A good resource is www.idot.com. I would avoid the ITX-PC Aluminum 200W Silent Cube case. The case is a bit flimsy, the mounts are cheap plastic, and peripherals don't fit it very well (I had to use a mototool on the hard drive bracket to quit shorting out my small form factor PCI video card). The PW-70A 100W 12V DC Converter for M EPIA works a treat, though.

Tracy Reed suggests:

I have a box from SolarPC? which is small, quiet, relatively cheap (~$250 iirc) and has no fans so it is quiet and runs Linux perfectly. http://www.solarpc.com

Bob LeQuey? suggests googling for mini-itx which gives you links to such places as http://www.mini-itx.com/ .