[gentoo-embedded] personal compile-farm ?

[Christopher Friedt <chrisfriedt@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

For a long time I've been considering various mini-itx form-factor
devices for multi-purpose use at home, as an HTPC, NAS, maybe messing
around with osx86, etc.

One particular use that I wanted to make of such a device would be to
use it as my own personal compile-farm, for various arm
cross-compilation builds, and binary packages for my laptop / netbook.

Recently, I was considering the Zotac IONITX-A. I would consider this
a fairly powerful, yet low-power device, with an Atom 330 dual-core
processor at 1.6 GHz and nVidia GPU ( Ion / 9400m ). I'm more than
certain that it would work well as an HTPC, but for a personal build
machine, I'd like to hear some feedback.

Does anyone on the list have a similar network-appliance that they use
for a personal compile-farm ? Neither of my aging x86 machines offer
any CPU features greater than sse2, and neither have multiple-cores.

For those who have a multi-core compile-farm at home, is there a
largely noticeable difference in speed?

If anyone does have a Zotac IONITX-A, how is the heat dissipation? Fan
or no fan?

Cheers,

Chris
On a slightly related note
PS: Alternatively, there has been some mention [1] of a dual-core
Ion-based device for the next AppleTV model or Mac Mini.

[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-nvidia-ion,6849.html