N100 Mini-ITX Silent PC Build

It would be interesting to see how you would approach building a similar computer with only one fan; perhaps on the CPU, and how the noise level compares to a fan less machine. Bonus points for using an AMD CPU. My sense is that much of the noise comes from an ATX PSU. I like the idea of using a 19v external power brick.

Great video!
Where does that version of Virtual Windows XP, together with what looks like Office 2003, come from please?

Could you please explain n100 series of CPU, difference to i3 and other regular celeron cpus.

is n100 cpu more capable then i3?

mini itx looks like a server compared to pi's and SBC's :-) waiting for a n100 with single2.5GBE ethernet. nice upgrade from my N3160 daily driver.

Great video (as always)! One thing I've learnt throughout the years of computing is to take pauses during longer sessions. It's easy to forget about time while working/gaming/etc., but a few minutes of just standing up or leaving the room for a minute helps with getting out of that very static stance one might have while sitting down (completely unaware of it). Tinnitus can come from muscle tension and so on, for instance, jaw clenching.

Hope the silent machine helps out anyhow! Sure think it will!

11 watts ?!! - hello there my new proxmox buddy, I'll make you feel right at home!

Ive been considering upgrading my mums core2 (it is alive still lol) with a n100 based device as it kind of struggles doing basic things. I tried a cheap 2nd & 3rd gen mobo from china with a i7 2600k cpu i had laying about but although quicker than the core 2 it BSOD when under cpu load, i think the boards power delivery isn't up to the task with 4 phase vrm.
All she needs to do is use word and browse the web.

Id like to know more in depth on what u did setting up windows xp and its programs inside linux mint :)


Actually my dad has been pestering me to install his old games from dos to xp but its a mess on finding compatibility on newer hardware :(

How would one attach extra sata drives to this? Would like to use it as a basis for a home server but not enough storage connectors :/

What about temperatures?

8GB? These days that is enough for a generous 12 chrome tabs.

Just a few remarks on a rather interesting video Is there no ddr5 itx version available? (ddr gives more bandwith & thus performance) No 16GB of ram? and last but not least perhaps a GPU that is a few watt to use for video converting?

It almost feels like all the weird low powered goodies are from asrock. I'm happily using asrock J4150m board for home server for 5 years now!

Unfortunately, these are hard to come by in Canada and thus are expensive, near $300.

Very helpful video as usual. Today I built a similar pc to his build. I’m very impressed with the performance and price. These N100 cpus make for a snappy little machine.

After I watched this video I bought all the parts and built one for myself. The bios went right to my USB stick and booted into Linux mint. I installed it and it loaded just fine. I installed a temperature app and put on a video, the temp only went up to 120. This is an amazing board. Thanks Chris.

I really need this board but with the n305 that are the true no compromise pc cuz can do anything

Neat, I'm thinking of using this motherboard for a low power server system. Looks good

Some information to help you with regard to your storage benchmarking: Even though your PCIe at 2x instead of 4x (Gen3) will likely incur bottleneck (and firmware is worth checking for backup and updating), there are still optimisations (kernel 2.6.31 and 2.17 util-linux or util-linux-ng naming, from 2009 or 2010), and your kernel is post 5.4 anyway (and your 'BIOS' is UEFI), so libvirt for that VM you have has been subject to optimisations and you might be considering passthroughs one day (as per VFIO and SR-IOV which has its own limitations per scenario and clients may be restricted to a given hardware, when considering to attempt bare-metal performance). You may check (for instance by smartctl) an NVMe for fast-format to see if switching from (512 emulation) 512e to 4Kn (4K native) is needed to be done yet, such that sector size of 512 bytes logicial/physical shows up and if two LBA formats of 512 and 4096 are to your preference (bearing in mind where your drive loads the 4096-Byte sector into memory on the actual drive and the firmware emulates the 512-Byte sector which is contained in that 4096-Byte sector). Then one may benchmark (metadata and so on) and switch perhaps to 4k LBA (and if you have been using 512 Bytes better relative performance mode, maybe able to opt instead for Best performance mode 4096 Bytes). Pay heed to performance gains (say maybe 10%, so you can never be too careful) from using native block size (4K-n), where relevant. Your operating system will support Advanced Format. See Distributed ECC as a point of reference. Consider your file-system, for example if you ever opt for non-root ZFS.
For coding/commands to print out (where 'H' is human readable), see manpages nvme-id-ns to customise your commands coded.
So nvme id-ns for ID namespace -H or like
nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 -H

My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.

MusicMatch Jukebox!!!! I love that player because when you click on a song it adds it to your playlist rather than play it immediately. What were the other mp3 player designers thinking when they changed that setting?

Unfortunately, they didn't give the the same audio out as my older Asrock ITX board, and the video out is lacking. At least the microatx version of this board has 3 video out. I get you can get audio out via the hdmi, but I have a few things that needs analog out.

There are fanless ATX power supplies available.

Also, every 10°C cooler doubles component life. If you can hear 19dBA fans when you're an adult, you haven't lived. 😊

There’s me buying systems with i5 8500 or 8400, 16gb ram with 500gb ssd for less than £120

Can you even export PDFs from that Office version? How do you set up the VM? Does it have access to all your files, or do you have to juggle files in a shared folder?

I was cringing when i saw a 970 Evo on a silent, passive build ^^' but seeing this heatsink later on was a relief lol
These particular samsung ones run so hot for gen3 drives.
To save a couple of watts i might have chosen some Crucial P3 instead. they run cold and will be more than enough for two PCIE 3.0 lanes.
I wonder if there are DDR5 motherboards like this one though. a single channel DDR5 is a pretty good boost compared to DDR4, even if for the use it may not matter.

Question for you? I've got a similar board with the N5105 chip rather than the N100? How are you finding the temperatures on you board? Sitting idle, I'm showing 60 degree's celsius, which seems high to me? I'm considering replacing the thermal paste to see if that helps but was just curious about your machine before I tear mine apart. Thanks

What's more surprising, this setup, if benchmarked from CPU & RAM alone, it is on par with the first ever Core i7 965 Extreme Edition.

So to illustrate the scaling of performance, it took nearly 14 years to bring down the Power Consumption of 1st Gen Core i7, down to this level of efficiency.

In other words, it is more than capable for retro Gaming.

I wonder if adding Graphics Card will work at all or not.

I hope the new fanless system is easier on your ears, Professor! Thank you for sharing this video with us...🇺🇸 👍☕

Thanks for sharing. This board and its bigger m-atx sister are right in the home pc/lab space and very economical too.
For anyone curious. The specific nvme is MZ-V7S2T0.
The manufacture’s website has a memory QVL file in the support section so you can get a better interesting about ram speed options.
There is a storage QVL too if anyone is curious.

Wow! A genuine LPT port and an RS-232 serial port?! Very rare these days!

Unfortunately, Intel N100 isn't a big upgrade over the i3-4330T that you had, in terms of single core compute. I prefer to invest into tech for at least 3 years. Most workloads use only 1-2 cores on Linux, so it would be better to have something in the laptop Ryzen 3 territory. Too bad the Phoenix2 APUs are really hard to get a hold of, a Ryzen 3 7440U would be a great chip for cheap.

Though I agree - the Intel N100 is going to be a great CPU for average use inside a mini-PC with DDR5-4800 RAM, as most apps now actually require fast RAM in addition to single-core CPU performance.

Well, this was a breath of fresh air.

I'm still using Softmaker Office 2016 on Windblows - same on Linux. Pretty close to the early versions of MS Office.

Nice, but why only 8GB Ram - i would put in 32 or at least 16 GB - I like using RAM-Disk and VM's...

Don't forget to peel off the i3 label 😄

This Will Run Straight Off Of My Ryobi 18Volt Batteries!! I Currently Am Running A Dell Optiplex SFF I7 8700 With m.2 for OS and A Full Sized 16TB HDD To Run jellyfin Media Server And Drive My TV! It Has 1 Fan In It And Unless I Am gaming And The GPU Starts Heating Up You Can Not Hear it From My Couch! I Think i Paid 190 For The PC 180 For The HDD And 50 For The SSD! The Graphics Card Was A Gift So I Did Not List It! It Replaced An Old Dell XPS 410 Core2 Q6600 With A Kingston 128GB SSD And An Old ATI Graphics Card That Had HDMI Out! The Old XPS Did Not Fail But At Some Time You Start To Worry About Faulty Capacitors! I Definitely Got My Money Out Of The Q6600 As Has Trans-coded Thousands Of Hours of DVR'ed TV Shows In The 12 Years I owned It! It Would Be Running 24 Hours A Day 365 days A Year About A Quarter of That Time It Was Converting Mpeg2 To MP4!! the New To me Optiplex Has Quick Sync Which makes Converting Video A Snap! What Was Taking Me Hours Now Only takes Minutes!

Great job as always . I would go with 16 GB memory stick and give LibreOffice Another go. Make sure you update your repo files to get latest version as sometime OS install points to older Libre Office repos provided by OS vendor (Ubuntu 22.04 from Canical server does that) You may be able to ditch your Windows XP virtual machine.

I hope this solves the ringing in your ears as you work. Best of luck.

Maybe good to remind builders of using static electricity mats

There are a few versions of these being used for "soft routers" and NAS boards on Aliexpress. Quite an upgrade over Celeron N5105/N5100

For the watt to perf is amazing for that role.

The Corsair Vengeance LPX Ram is amazing Ram
i buy that for everything i can
got it in my old DDR3 Systems i use still too
Just bought a 64 GB Kit for my i9 9900
An Finally got my Nvidia A2000 after now it is severely outdated Ohh Well '
Im doing good now for a workstation
Now to get the new server build complete

Wow i can have virtual xp and win10 in mint? Is it difficult?

Hi Chris! Did you eventually change the RAM speed to the full 3000?

The last passively cooled computer I had was an Amiga 500. It wasn't quiet though with that floppy drive. 😀

Just so you know, kingston hyper x fury 32gb 3200mhz work in these and run at full speed

This has inspired me to make a silent ITX build.

🙏👏👏👏🙏

❤❤❤❤

You'd forgotten that you even had a sound card in that system... I went and rewatched the original build video; you mentioned that you wanted the full sound card to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking which didn't work well with onboard motherboard audio. I take it that means you either stopped using that software or otherwise stopped needing the sound card?

I bought an N100 NUC recently, and it is remarkable performance for the price. It feels like my old desktop i5 from ten years ago: 4 cores, 4 threads, nothing fancy like P-cores or chiplets, everything is equal and sane. It feels right somehow.