Yesterday, I wrote about MSI J1800i, a motherboard based on Intel Celeron J1800 “Bay Trail-D” processor with 10W TDP, that is expected to sell for $60 by the end of the month. I’m sure some fully assembled fanless small form factor computers based on Bay Trail-D processor will eventually show up, but I’ve decided to find out what would be needed to build a complete fanless PC with this mini-ITX motherboard, and how much it would cost.
First we’ll need a mini-ITX enclosure with a fanless PSU. I’ve found M350 Universal Mini-ITX enclosure (pictured above) coupled with picoPSU-80 80W picoPSU-90 90W 12V fanless power supply, and a 12V 60W AC-AC power adapter would probably fit the bill. The mini-ITX casing and power adapter are available from E-ITX.com, and the picoPSU power supply can be found on Amazon.
I’ll also add a 1TB SATA HDD, and a 4GB SO-DIMM DDR3 memory stick. I’ll just select some best selling parts from Amazon US, namely HGST Travelstar 2.5″ 1TB SATA HDD, and Crucial CT51264BF1339 4GB Single DDR3 1333 MT/s (PC3-10600) CL9 SODIMM notebook memory module.
I’d guess that’s all you’d need to get a fully working system, except possibly some cables. Let’s see how much this would all cost:
- MSI J1800i motherboard – ~$60
- M350 mini-ITX enclosure – $39.95
picoPSU-80 PSU – $24[Update: this won’t work. See comments section, so I’ve replaced it with:]- picoPSU-90 PSU – $21.92
- 12V 60W AC-AC power adapter with US power cord – $14
- HGST Travel 1TB 2.5″ SATA HDD – $74.25
- Crucial 4GB SO-DIMM DDR3 – $44.14
The total is $256.34 $254.26, shipping not included. Some items are shipped for free (Amazon) to the US, and if you live somewhere else, you should be able to find similar parts at the same or even lower price locally. All you’d have to do now is to install your preferred operating system via a USB flash drive or USB DVD drive.
Did I miss anything? Or do you have any other suggestions? Comments are welcome.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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