[Dougie Fresh]

While not fanless, this prebuilt barebones is very quiet and has optical out: E-i5 AMD barebones. There is also an Intel Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge version which both have optical out: E-i5 Intel barebones

[Nick62]

Thanks guys, and...

...any suggestion for a fanless pre-built box with optical spdif out?

[Arthur Daley]

A couple of other motherboard solutions are

ww.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E45M1I_DELUXE/

and

http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-ion-itx-s-...x-s-e.html

They have wireless built in, itx, digital out and should handle 1080p.

[Dougie Fresh]

Fanless usually means Atom or Zacate (E-350/E-450) which you'll find if you look around people have widely varied experiences with. Most complaints are usually around performance of everyday tasks and the inability to stream video from the web when it's not hardware accelerated. That may or may not matter to you.

If you want an i3 fanless solution then you need a specialized case and that can get pretty spendy. I do know one guy who is doing pre-built fanless HTPCs in the Lian-Li Q05 case: http://assassinhtpc.com/index.php. He has a thread here: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1422380/assass...tx-project. This is probably the least expensive high-quality fanless case I can think of so I have to imagine it'd be a pretty good deal (I don't know pricing).

With some Googling I can up with these Intel fanless options:
http://www.quietpc.com/sys-fc8-h61
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc/intensepc/

My shop will also do a custom fanless build for you.

[Nick62]

Thanks to all, I would really go for a fanless box with optical spdif out (better if with OpenELEC or XBMC onboard).

The funny thing is, for EVERY box, there are forums with people complaining and returning them because of various defects, even for Dune boxes which I understood to be within the most reliable ones... ...discouraging...

Any reliable less-known alternate box?