Installing Linux OS

At the moment I do not have a need for a CDD in my computer. However, I needed one temporarily to install the OS. For this purpose I used a standard DVD drive and temporarily put it beside the computer. A problem I was faced with is the CDD power connector. The inner case power cable is actually a Y-splitter. One of its connectors is the standard one that is used in 3.5" HDDs. The other two connectors are the floppy-type ones. One of these floppy-type connectors goes to the power convertor board and the other one is supposed to be connected to a slim-design (laptop-type) CDD. The CDD I used is not a slim-type and it has just the same power connector as my 3.5" HDD. Therefore, I needed another Y-splitter to connect power to the drives, see the picture below. Find one in your local RadioShack store.

Well, it worked. The LiteOn DVD drive LDW-411S was automatically recognized by both the motherboard BIOS and the OS and I could start the OS installation. I use openSuSE Linux version 10.2. This open source OS can be downloaded from the opensuse.com website and provides all the applications I have mentioned at the beginning. I use KDE and OpenOffice for office-type applications, Tex for text processing, GIMP for images, digiKam for photos management, Iscan for scanning, Amarok for audio playback (with xine engine), Xine for multimedia playback, Firefox and Kmail for the Web browsing and email, and K3B for CD/DVD recording (if I had a DVD drive installed). Installing OS goes outside the scope of this article devoted to hardware, so I omit the details. I have also installed Windows XP temporarily just out of curiosity to see how it works and have to admit that both OSs run just fine on this hardware.

The only problem with installing the Linux OS was the on-board video. It is based on the VIA VM800 chip and the OS installation program (YAST) could only set it up to a somewhat lower resolution 1024x768 and 16-bit color mode. The video system shares the main system memory, and I allocated 64Mb for it in the BIOS. I see now that it is too much for my applications, so probably 32Mb or even 16Mb would have been more than sufficient - I will play with this later. The supplied driver with the openSuSE distro could not do a better resolution and color depth, while I wanted 1280x1024 at 24-bit to match the default resolution of my NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX monitor. To achieve this, I downloaded the OpenChrome drivers for the VIA UniChrome video chipsets. You need to install the main driver xorg-x11-driver-video-openchrome and the the kernel DRM module openchrome-drm-kmp-default, check here for configuration details. The video works fine, the playback of video clips is very smooth as the driver supports MPEG2 and 3D acceleration of the on-board video chip. Note that the Xorg driver sees the North bridge chip as VM800 instead of CN700 and South Bridge as VC8235 instead of VC8237R. But I closed my eyes on that, since the same driver serves both chipsets, anyway. Here is the final inner view of the PC after installing the OS and disconnecting the CDD. I fixed the power connector in the CDD area with a tape till a later possible installation of a slim-design CDD there.

Right out of the box (more exactly DVD) of this open source Linux distribution you won't get many standard audio/video codecs due to licensing restrictions and won't be able to play file formats like mp3, wav, avi, etc. This can be resolved by compiling xine, Amarok, and K3B from source, provided that you own licenses for these proprietary codecs.

The mini-PC is very ergonomic and consumes about 2.7W while being turned off (the power brick remains on), 15W when on and idle, and 20-22W at average load of running a video from the CDD. The measurements are taken after an installation of a 2.5" HDD and a slim-design CDD and provided by the Kill-A-Watt meter manufactured by P3 International. Compared to our other electronic devices, the 19" LCD NEC monitor consumes 22W, the desktop halogen lamp (see Fig. 18) takes 24W, the on floor standing lamp with a power-saving bulb consumes about 13W, my old Athlon XP 1.5Ghz tower takes 120W when idle, my son's Athlon XP 2.2Ghz tower along with a 22" LCD monitor and a 2-years old decent graphics card consumes 190W in average. A modern high-end PC can easily go above 200W.

Therefore, this mini-PC consumes about 0.02 kWh at full load, and running it 24/7 non-stop for a year as a home network server with the electrical energy cost in our area being about US$0.07/kWh, would cost you US$12.25 annually. You can reduce it a bit by turning off the Num Lock LED on the keyboard :) Speaking of the network, my DSL modem and standard LinkSys wireless network router taken together consume 7W of power when idle, which is about 30% of this mini-PC power consumption.

Final Touches

As I mentioned earlier it is important to provide a good airflow throughout the case, so one should carefully lay out the cables below the HDD. My 3.5" 80Gb HDD gets noticeably warm, so I decided to plug-in the case fan to cool it down. I do not think it was really necessary, as this drive survived for about 2 years in another PC without any cooling. However, with the fan attached the HDD is cooler than my fingers when I touch it, and so is the CPU heatsink. The fan is really silent, has a ball bearing and contributes just a bit to the entire noise level. I do not have an equipment to measure it, but the HDD heads' movement is the loudest sound from that PC, and the total noise level is definitely below whispering. A drawback of using a 3.5" HDD is that one gets less space for an extension card. If you decide to install one, keep in mind that it will be right below the HDD and make sure that the maximum height of its components does not go beyond its mounting bracket.

Here is another view of the inner layout. This PC is for my major and everyday use and is a supplement to my other more powerful computer, which I use for some computation-intensive tasks like rendering my amateur videos and burning them on DVD. Both computers are controlled from one keyboard and mouse by using a LinkSys KVM switch. They also share the same monitor, but I switch it on the front panel, since it takes a VGA connector from this PC and a DVI connector from the other one. I thought about installing of a DVI video card, like the one in my other computer, but I barely notice any difference in the image quality of my monitor working from the DVI or the VGA input. This becomes even more true after turning of the built-in anti-aliacing features in fonts. You might think about installing another network card if you wish to use this PC as a firewall for your home network, although there are other mini-ITX motherboards with two integrated network connectors. Since the power consumption of this PC is extremely low, you do not need to worry about running it all the day long. The external power adapter gets just a bit warm in my use, nothing to compare with some laptop power adapters.

The PC fits well on my desk giving a free access to the front USB and audio ports. It can even be booted from a flash memory stick. A DSL Linux would fit there perfectly including the graphics window manager, so you can turn off the HDD and the fan to have a PC firewall without any moving parts. The Firewire port remains disconnected, as there is no corresponding feature on the motherboard. It is really nice that the cables can be disconnected from the inner board if the corresponding connector is not in use. This saves some space within the case and is beneficial for a better airflow.

This is the back panel view. The audio output is redirected to the front panel (one can use only one out of two output connectors) as well as the microphone input. The audio-in connector is still on the back. Next to the left from the audio connectors one can see two video TV connectors - a nice feature if you integrate this PC into your entertainment center.

Here is overall view of the system. In spite of the fact that it is only a 1Ghz PC, all my applications run very fast (well, I can wait a second or two for a window to pop up :). The Firefox browser works exactly as fast as in the other PC; the page opening time is completely determined by my network connection speed. I watched movies on this PC from DVD and AVI files and the on-board video handles this very smoothly just like a stand-alone DVD player. The CPU load is about 50% and 40% respectively, while the Xine contribution to it is about 30 - 35%. The video runs very smoothly without noticeable drops and hops. The audio quality is just perfect for movies as well as for listening CDs and MP3s.

The CD supplied with the motherboard has some drivers to improve the network and audio but for Windows only. I saw something on that in the Linux discussion forums on the VIA Tech site. Some people report problems with Windows video drivers to run wide-screen resolutions, while the Linux drivers can handle it flawlessly.

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