Sounds good. It's a long time ago I used such a system, so do these old systems really need a fan on the CPU? Would it be possible to cool them with one of the huge coolers (for Pentium IV or AMD) without a fan? I'm looking for a vdr solution without moving parts inside.
I run an AMD K6-2 450MHz box with a Zalman flower cooler on it with no fan. I haven't used VDR on it in years since i can't get DVB-T reception at the moment but I backup to it from my lab every night. Uptimes have been around 2 months with no problems and that was limited by power cuts. The case is also full of insulating foam to cut noise. hHe power supply is a Q-technology 300W silent power supply and the system only draws 50W. I would use a fanless PSU with a lower output if I could find one that was cheap.
The loudest noise is now from the hard disks but I keep them spun down the majority of the time (This isn't meant to be good for their lifetime though).
In summary, you should have no problem passively cooling a 166MHz pentium.
Glyn
Powersupply without a fan would be cool as well, but currently to expensive. Or could I operate one without the fan, as it "just" has to supply a slow Pentium 166 and wouldn't heat up that much?
What about a second FF card in such a system? Too much traffic for the poor old P166?
Thilo