Topic: I'm looking for a low power PC solution (Read 2074 times)

he said no Linux and no Pi, must be Winblows...
So, if you dig around you can find one of the older tablets that run Windows CE and has USB, plug in a USB/Ethernet adapter, cross your fingers the drivers will work in Windows CE and use that.  Those old palm clones came with some weird options and docks so it's possible that you can find one of those that will work and use as much power as 2 overclocked AntMiners.

Good luck.

You could look into Thin Clients running WES2009/WES7/WES8 Thin Clients have several advantages

Modern thin clients typically use anywhere between 5-20watts (Older ones more than that) and designed to be power efficient
Small
Barely produce any excess heat
With the WES OS' every machine designed with WES as the OS is already licensed for the OS.
WES (Windows Embedded System) is basically a cut down version of windows but is specific to the hardware its installed on. What this means is you can install practically any standard windows app onto a WES OS.
Thin Clients usually have free management software that can manage operations tasks remotely (Like re-imaging, reboots and software updates). They support RDP and can function as part of a domain.

Personally I would look into HP thin Clients and I would suggest the T510. Brand new this may come in over your budget but on ebay you could get the deal you want. Thin Clients are not in big demand on the second hand market or not as far as Im aware.

Personally I have a Windows 7 pro machine with an SSD and 4gig of ram. No drives or anything surplus to requirements. It pulls a little too much power and if I had not built the pc before thinking about a Thin Client I probably would have would have gone with the TC.

The downside is I cannot vouch for the reliability of a Thin Client machine running 24/7 but I have not had any experience that would say it was a bad idea.

Hope this helps

Update - the foxconn box I referred to above draws 13w at idle and 19w while running 3 separate cgminer, one proxy instance on Ubuntu.  It will run win7.

I run a samsung N130 netbook (now quite old) to do torrents. It previously also hosted some block erupter USB's. It uses less than 17 watts at all times. If the screen is closed and managed remotely, it uses even less power. At idle, sometimes only 10 watts. If it had a SSD, then it would probably get below 10 watts. The power cost becomes irrelevant. The atom CPU can only use 2-2.5 watts, so even at load consumption is never above 20 watts in the worst case.

You can install windows from a USB stick on most netbooks, mine runs windows 7 ultimate. It is a little slow sometimes, but if you are just using it to control mining hardware, the laggy interface will not concern you at all. There are heaps of guides to optimizing W7 for netbooks online.

Your supplier would be ebay.

My FoxConn nt-A3500 draws around 50 watts. Anyone ever use the 12 PCI-e MoBo before?

Intel sells MBs with the atom processor for about US$80.00 of course you need other parts. I built a machine for about US$150.00 It is currently running 36 Block Erupters and isn't even breathing hard. The computer itself uses about 35 watts. I'm running Ubuntu Linux, but it would run windows as well.

ASUS Eee PC would also fit you need. They used to come with XP, even after XP was discontinued.

You will not find a supplier that will suit all your requirements!

I currently use a Celeron NUC.  It's the Celeron 847 (dual 1.1GHz), with 2GB RAM and a 30GB SSD.  It runs Windows 7 perfectly, though I run Debian Wheezy on mine.  It uses 15W at most, usually about 8W.

I also just got a new NUC DN2820  which is even more power efficient, and uses cheaper 2.5" SATA drives (the 847 NUC only uses mSATA SSDs). It uses less than 10W flat out with a SSD.  Mine uses 12W with a 320GB 7200rpm Seagate Momentus Thin drive in it.  When the drive is spun down it uses 6W.  It's also faster than the 847, and has 3x USB3 ports.

I may have overestimated.  Will put a kill-o-watt on it and report back.

The power use of this is far too high.I'm looking for around 20-30W power use at the most as I face very high electric prices of around $0.40 per Kwh (converted from GBP) so I can't really use this.Thanks anyway

For low power applications, I have a couple of FoxConn nt-A3500. Draw about 60-70 watts, runs win7 well, runs xubuntu like a champ.  

edit: 65 watts as a headless ubuntu with ssd.   Monitor, KB, mouse, mechanical HD, will add to power draw.

I'll elaborate.What I'm looking for is either a netbook,netbox or a cheap motherboard with a built in Atom CPU so I can run all my ASICs without relying on my current PC (as it wastes 80W just idling and connected to the internet for running the ASICs) and freeing up my MacBook Pro (as I can't afford to keep it connected to them as I want to focus on my pro filmmaking work and want to delegate mining to a separate PC)

Here's what I'm looking for:
1.A computer that must run windows (no exceptions) or have a way to install windows if supplied with another OS (as some earlier netbooks/netboxes came with Ubuntu instead of Win 7).
2.A cheap (used) netbook,netbox or cheap motherboard (with built-in Atom CPU) off eBay or another site
3.A supplier based in the UK/EU (I don't wish to deal with suppliers outside the EU due to import tax as I have no paitence with UK customs when dealing with it)

What I don't want:
1.Raspberry Pi (as the system seems too cryptic for me to source the right OS image that supports Bitcoin/Litecoin mining on ASICs,flashing that image with my mac and the lack of clear guidelines)
2.Anything that comes wth linux (as it's a waste of my time and have no paitence with cumbersome/confusing solutions)
3.Anything that costs over £100 (as I'm buying used,not new)

I've found a lot of these on eBay but they keep selling out (I bid a lot of times and lose the auction) so I'm looking for help in finding a supplier on Ebay or elsewhere that can suit my requirements.

Would appreciate the help.Thanks a lot