Tuesday 8 September 2009

Order an Intel BOXDQ45EK Mini-ITX = Free AOpen S145A Mini-ITX Chassis 91.90G20.A010

Intel currently has a promotion on called Now’s the Time (Intel’s Promo Site). If we purchase an Intel vPro enabled BOXDQ45EK Mini-ITX motherboard then a freebie chassis will be thrown in at no cost to us.

Here are some of the promos available to us in Canada:

image

Here in Canada, no one has stock on any of the promo codes except Ingram Micro Canada.

Finding an image of the S145A via search was not very easy to do.

The other distributors have In-Win or Winsis Mini-ITX chassis but no ETA on stock for either. Ingram happens to have a lot of the AOpen S145As so we took a risk.

Here is a side-by-side with an In-Win BM639 series Mini-ITX chassis we have been using to date on the left and the AOpen on the right:

AOpen And In-Win 001

The AOpen is slimmer but longer than the In-Win. Thus, we need to keep that in mind when it comes to the workstation’s desktop footprint.

Folks like the height of the In-Win because an LCD monitor sitting on top of it is actually at a pretty comfortable level for a broad spectrum of users.

The promotion is a good deal, but, for the cost conscious among us it is important to note that the AOpen chassis only accepts slimline optical drives. The AOpen, however, does include a slimline SATA to standard SATA adapter cable which is a nice touch.

The typical slimline DVDRW drive is about $60CA or so from our local sources. A quick check with the larger distributors may yield a much better price.

Another plus on the AOpen’s side is the larger power supply. At 160 Watts we can look at a 150GB or 300GB VelociRaptor (2.5” standalone version linked) for a more robust disk subsystem and not worry about taxing the PSU.

The Ingram promo SKU needed to be ordered via phone as the online card had the SKU listed under the motherboard’s SKU, but would not allow us to place it in the cart.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

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