A PC Case with External Power Supply?

aralin asks: "I am building a new home server (web server, email, source code repository, ...) and don't really need that much performance, but would like to make it ultra quiet. I have found some quiet, one platter harddrives and can get a lower-end graphics card without a fan. I underclock the CPU so it never really needs cooling, besides the load on the computer will be quite low, most of the time. What I cannot get around easily is the power supply. They are quite noisy and the quiet ones are really expensive. I'm just not going to put half of my budget on a power supply. Do you know any company that manufactures PC cases with external power supply or do you know any other cheap solution to a quiet PC?"

"So, I recently looked at the Mac Mini and it got me thinking, why couldn't PCs have an external power supply, like the Mac Mini or notebooks. Would it be so hard to make a case like that? It could be even smaller than the typical Mini-ITX cases, and with all the bricks from routers and external harddrives and other devices, I wouldn't mind one more lying around in exchange for the bliss of absolutely quiet PC in my bedroom."

Google?

[KurdtX]

I don't suppose google has been of any help, has it?
http://www.google.com/search?q=quiet+psu [google.com]

I seemed to find a pretty quiet PSU pretty easy, dunno about you:
http://www.endpcnoise.com [endpcnoise.com]

Because while an external PSU might be cool, you're really only trying to solve the noise problem.

Re:Then why not the Mac Mini?

[tomstdenis]

Nice try, except with a logitech "mac comptaible" USB keyboard ***NONE*** of the keyboard shortcuts work with the mac-mini. Not "hold C" or "alt-option-o-f" or the many others. Not a single one.

You probably need a blessed official Apple keyboard or something.

Basically once I got yaboot [improperly] installed my Gentoo setup wouldn't boot and I couldn't boot off the MacOSX Installer CD [hitting 'c' or not]. It could be just my Mac is broken but it booted OSX just fine and worked correctly while up. I think the BIOS, er, sorry "open firmware" is just crap and didn't recognize my keyboard [or allowed startup combos].

Frankly I'm not impressed by a computer lacking a BIOS [or monitor of some sort]. Even my 8051 board has startup software to help use it...

Tom

Re:Then why not the Mac Mini?

[chez69]

i'm glad I don't have to type in strange commands in a mac to do stuff, like in linux.