While looking for a quiet power supply fan replacement to quiet down a new box, I encountered a group of crazy, black-light in the case with plexiglass side-panels, water-cooled CPU, wild paint job case modders. It's apparently not enough to show up at a LAN party with an overclocked box. Now one has to show up in style. I guess the energy that used to go into customizing cars had to go somewhere.
My new toy is a mini-itx box, which splits the difference between the cheapo $200 WalMart PCs and low-end AMD/Celeron boxes. It cost $425 USD to put together (800 Mhz Via C3 with onboard sound/video/LAN, 256Mb RAM, 60Gb disk, CDRW). Once I get the power supply fan quieted down, it'll sit quietly in some corner, serving files and such. I'll put a penguin decal on it so that it won't feel left out.
Linux Format have a review of a Netbox Cubit mini-itx based system this month. It's a cute 200x200x150mm box with low-noise components also based on the VIA Eden chipset. The base model is quite cheap, and as long as you want a Linux version it seems really good value for money.
If I recall The Register ran a story about the VIA ITX motherboard family and what they hoped to do with it. Looks like a few manufacturers are making boxes with the parts.
