More Random Videos
Well it was easy for me to spot as I've actually made several "tiny" PCs for customers so I know what the limits on shrinking X86 are. You'd be surprised how handy having a completely enclosed "tiny PC" is when you are dealing with construction sites or workman's trailers where the dirt and grime would slaughter the fans on a normal PC.
So I can tell ya the absolute smallest you can get and still have it functional is slightly bigger than a phone book, and on those I had to use cases originally designed for automotive placement where the entire case acts like a heatsink.
But if someone doesn't need that insane level of shrinkage you can easily build a really nice HTPC about the size of a VCR for around $500 that makes a killer multimedia and gaming rig. But I can tell you the smallest boards are Pico boards and even those tiny suckers are still the size of a paperback, not a matchbook like in that video.
If you are gonna fake, at least fake believably. If he would have made it about the size of a large paperback it might have been possible, but this? total BS.
The guys is into miniature things
I don't think he was really trying to fool or fake anyone, he's just into small things .. I dunno - I just thought it was cute.
I've built PC's for a hobby for years.. micros are too small for Big_T's big hands - This past year, I built a mini ITX computer for a friend .. and cussed too much due to the size of it all - nice looking when it was all done. I made it a gaming computer for him and put a real video card in and that was the mistake as there is not much room after that.
It is good to hear that you build PC's for people - the world needs more geeks who like to do things with their hands.
Well if for nothing else I give him credit for the LCD. It surely wasn't easy running the wiring on one of those little hobby LCD screens and wiring it into a little LCD case. I bet that was a PITA.
But it sounds like you were going HTPC in that case mATX VCR style cases are the way to go. Foxconn makes some nice ones that are barely bigger than a VCR and give you enough room to fit a decent graphics card as long as you don't go nuts (I wouldn't use bigger than an HD5770 or HD4850) and most importantly for guys like us with big old meathooks they give you room to work in. But I've found if you stick with a classy looking case folks don't even mind a mATX tower for their HTPC. the new towers are solid black and look nice behind the glass of their TV cabinet.
Yeah I loooove building boxes. Building boxes and playing bass are the two things that keep me sane. the bass lets me turn off my brain and let the music flow out and the building lets me create something that will last. Nothing like the first time you flip that switch and you hear the fans kick on and the lights all flicker to life and the BIOS starts reading OK across the board.
BTW if you like building you need to keep an eye out at Tigerdirect for the next month or so if you'd like a killer machine for crazy cheap, and you might want to give your buds a heads up as well. AMD is getting ready to switch from AM3 to AM3 Plus so the AM3 and AM2 Plus (which are backwards compatibly BTW, you can drop an AM3 chip into an AM2 board no problem, just not the AM3 Plus because those have graphics chips built in) based kits are gonna be crazy priced! I just finished up an AMD Athlon quad build as a spare for my dad, and I only paid $199 for the hardware! Add a copy of Windows 7 HP for $60 off of W00t! and you are talking quad core, 4Gb of RAM, 500Gb HDD, full HD through HDMI with an HD4250, all for $265 shipped!
So like I'm telling everyone for the next month and a half its gonna be like geeker heaven at TD with insanely cheap AMD gear. The unlocked Black Edition gamer chips, duals, triples, quads, you name it they are gonna be cheap! So if you like to build keep an eye on their site or better yet sign up for the newsletter as they'll send you codes that drop the price even lower. There is nothing like scoring killer gear for cheap!
hairyfeet
Fake. He is using VNC to remote in to a real PC. It is quite easy to tell since he has his "small" PC running Windows which only runs on X86. There are only 3 manufacturers of x86 chips, AMD, Intel, and Via and in all three the CPU is bigger than his entire PC!
So what he did was tie the "on" button to the activation of a VM (virtual machine) on the host PC and has the screen tied to that. its cute but about as real as painting the word robot on a cardboard box and expecting it to get you a beer.