Cheap, Quiet, Low Power

[Tergiver]

I want to build a system who's only purpose will be to act as a print server and backup storage. We're talking about a few pages here and there and a nightly backup of 0-5MB (these are normally small because they are simply a 'robocopy /mir' operation).

So it needs an ethernet card, a couple of large disk drives, a rudimentary video card, and the cheapest POS case out there.

My priorities are (in order):
Cheap
Quiet
Low Power

Cheap because I don't want to spend a lot of money on it.
Quiet because it's in my bedroom and I don't want to hear it at night. This means a system that can run 24/7 without fans because so called quiet fans don't come cheap.
Low Power because I don't want to spend a lot of money running it. And low power = low heat = less fans = quiet.

Definition of cheap: The operating system is going to run me $100. I would like to build the system (excluding the cost of the disk drives) for less then the cost of the operating system. I need a Windows OS for several reasons, but the biggest is NTFS requirement.

There are so many options out there. I have no idea how to build a system that will be functional and require little or no cooling. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

 

[itotallybelieveyou]

little or no cooling with the Radeon 7000s which can do the job or just keep the onboard. cpu wise unless you get under 1ghz not gonna happen with no fan. A couple of large harddrives? they going to make some sounds no matter what

 

[bigfreakintexan]

In order to be completely fanless, you can purchase massive heatsinks for your CPU and VGA but they are not cheap (~50-$100). Google "silent pc" and you can find some examples. You still need to cool the case or buy one of those cases that are essentially one huge heatsink but again, they are quite expensive. In all honesty, I can't see your project coming in anywhere near your budget.

 

[zenmaster]

Why do you need NTFS?
There are far more tools that RoboCopy.
RoboCopy can even be done against a Linux File System.
Save yourself $100 and learn a bit at the same time.

An old 386 system could even handle that load and not use much power. Go Visit CraigsList.Org. Lots of Cheap stuff there.