Looking for a cheap, decent server.

[Geekling]

I just need a small server for my house. It will be mainly a file and print server. No games, websites, etc.

Any suggestions on the hardware? I will be buying plenty of HDs to fill this beast. We have a lot of videos, pics, etc that need to go on the server.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Net]

see my signature

maybe more power then what your looking for but it's a great machine and it's dead silent.

 

[Geekling]

And more than i want to spend at the moment I wasn't kidding when I said cheap. lol...

 

[pradeep1]

Dell refurb/outlet center usually has some cheap servers. What type of specs were you looking for?

 

[DaveSimmons]

If it isn't doing encoding, an old socket 754, P4 or even an XP or pentium 3 will work. Look for something cheap in FS/FT. I was using a tualatin 1.3 for my music server (with a Promise IDE controller for extra drives) until I retired it.

You'll need a SATA RAID5 controller for a pile of drives if you want to have some failure recovery. Drives will die.

 

[Paperlantern]

I run a AMD Thunderbird 850 MHz for a web server, Ventrilo server and picture gallery, as well as file and print server, has 3/4 of a gig of ram, does just dandy, for a file and print server only you could run a PII 300, with as much ram as you can stuff in it with xp pro loaded and have headroom to spare. Resources needed for a basic server like that are next to nothing.

 

[Nnyan]

Decide if you want to stick with windows or maybe a linux distro like FreeNAS or Openfiler (which are pretty darn easy). Just get the cheapest parts (if you go the Linux route check driver support) you can. I think the cheapest route is to find a motherboard that has enough ports (SATA or PATA) for the number of HD that you want to buy and that it supports RAID5.

 

[elcamino74ss]

I'll 2nd the cheap option. I was using an old dell p3 933 gx150 with 512mb ram. I just upgraded the main pc and had a s754 nforce3 board, an athlon 64 2800, and 2 x 512mb sticks of cas2 gskill. I picked up an Antec NSK 4400 Case with 380w psu for $49 from frys yesterday and going to use that for my new server.

 

[Evadman]

I use an Infrant NV+, which is basically the same as a NV, about $500 + disks. Works great as a file server and print server and has nice upgradability.

 

[Atheus]

I run P3s in mine; processor power is a non-issue for home servers. Get some decent quality older stuff off ebay and give it new hard drives, and also a new power supply to avoid blowing them up.

 

[GZeus]

Its cheaper to buy used or 'old' stock but in case you want to go for a new build you could try this MB:

GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 ATX nVIDIA GeForce 6100 @ mWave $73

Its full size ATX (I don't like mini's myself), got 4 SATAII ports and integrated VGA so no card to buy for video. Similar mini's can probably be found for a few bucks less.

A cheap dual core costs $70 and a single core as little as $30. Add a GB (or less) of low cost DDR2 (+/-$45) and you're on your way for $150-$200.

You'll need to add a case, PSU (both available for Free if you don't mind rebates) and your choice of HDDs.

My $0.02

 

[imported_Tick]

Also, consider a Mini-ITX system. Around $500, and almost completly silent, and, especially important for a 24x7 system, it uses very very little power.

 

[GZeus]

Originally posted by: Tick
Also, consider a Mini-ITX system. Around $500, and almost completly silent, and, especially important for a 24x7 system, it uses very very little power.

Sweet stuff!! I hadn't seen that before.... time to do a little reading on my next project.

 

[Texun]

Not a complete system but a solid start would be a Venice 3200, 200g drive and a basic 754 board at Newegg... http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813138240

BIOSTAR K8NHA Grand Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 2.2GHz Socket 754 Processor Model ADA3200AI04BX - OEM
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2000JS 200GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Original price: $135.98
Discount: -$20.99
Combo Price: $114.99

If you don't want the drive it's $70 for the board and CPU. Enable CnQ and it will pull very little juice and run in the 20's. I've got almost the same setup using an ECS board for photos, MP3's, security cam as well as RadioShark for recording various radio programs.

 

[zylander]

When I wanted to get a server for my house, I was originally going to get a cheap PIII off craigslist, but then I found the quad Xeon system that is in my sig for just $120 .

You can find plenty of PIII systems on craigslist or ebay for real cheap. You could run Linux and throw a bunch of HDs in it.

 

[Atheus]

zylander: "Twelve 9.1gb SCSI drives in RAID 5"

Holy crap dude, is it loud? Is it fast? What kind of SCSI is it, U160?

 

[zylander]

Originally posted by: Atheus
zylander: "Twelve 9.1gb SCSI drives in RAID 5"

Holy crap dude, is it loud? Is it fast? What kind of SCSI is it, U160?

Heh, its not too loud, but I keep it in the basement so I dont really care.

The HDs are SCSI UltraII, D610. Its seems pretty fast, I havent used it much though. I just got it a few weeks ago and hhavent had much time to work on it. The previous owner had it already setup in a RAID 5, Im not sure if I want to keep it, and I still need to dump a few more larger HDs into it.

 

[Net]

AMD k6-2 550MHz
256MB RAM
40GB 7200rpm
10GB 5400rpm
50X CD-Rom
HP 12x8x32 Internal CD-RW Drive
Floppy Drive
Ethernet Card
cooler master heatsink/fan
thermal take chipset fan (picture taken just before I put it on)

Picture

$65 Shipped