Back in 2008, I purchased a Shuttle K45 barebone, added a processor, 1GB RAM and 2x 750GB. I also exchanged the stock PSU for a quiet, fanless version, the PC62. Aim: a quiet Time Machine backup server running on Linux. Halfway 2010, the computer started to make funny noise, unpredictable behavior and refused to reboot in the end. Dead.
Long live the Internet: I was not alone. So, I tried to fix it. Ordered capacitors on Ebay, got myself a soldering iron and checked out Youtube. Again, I was not the first one to replace items on a motherboard. And probably also not the first one to mess it up: It booted once and failed misserably after an hour or so. I did try again but no luck (or skills).
I ended up purchasing a new mother board: the Intel D510MO, a fanless mother board with a dual core Atom D510 processor. How cute! Without too much effort, I was able to place it in the Shuttle K45 case. It is now happily running Debian Squeeze and accepting Time Machine backups. I have no issues with speed in normal day to day life; compiling a new kernel however takes a lot of time.
Why Squeeze (Debian Testing at the time of writing)? Debian Testing is not considered the wisest choice for a server. But it ships with a newer version of netatalk; capable of talking with Time Machine out of the box.
Conclusion: Shuttle K45 is suffering from bad capacitors which can be replaced by a skilled person. If you mess it up, the microATX Intel D510MO main board is a good replacement.
Next up: power saving
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