They were still taking bets when I heard about this about a week ago, but now the challenge has begun. For those of you not in the know, Technovoyance and VIA doing a stunt right now where they’re running this super-efficient little Pico-ITX chipset with no fans, no heatsink or anything until it croaks. They took bets from people on how long it would go with the prize being a build kit of said chipset.
They’ve got Ubuntu 8.04 on there and they’re looping an mp4 video to tax the processor and video card. Unfortunately it’s a VIA demo of the chipset, and not something interesting like, say, “Never gonna give you up.” In any case, the live stream is here so you can keep an eye on it. I’m guessing it’s going to go a good long time before crapping out.; we’ll keep you posted.