Some advice about a cheap board

[Lightning983]

Hello,

I'm planing on building a small home server in the next week or so, and i need some advice on what mobo to get.
The plan is to have a computer that uses as less power as possible, but still be able to act as a home or download server.

Here's the choice of motherboards:

Gigabyte G31M-S2L
Asrock G31M-GS

I couldn't find any other is this price range (about 60$)

I'm planing on pairing it with this:

Celeron Dual Core E1200
G.SKILL Standard Series, 1GB, DDR2 800 MHz
Fortron 350W
Samsung Spinpoint F1, 8MB c. , 250GB

So my questions would be:

1.) Do i really need to have Vista x64 installed if i want to share files over LAN, because i tried combining my Vista with a friend's laptop (he has XP Pro), and we couldn't get "map network drives" to work.

2.) What motherboard do i get? Is it all the same if i get G31 or G33? - i'm not looking for performance

3.) I can't find any PSU's below 300W so i'm guessing that would be fine for this configuration?


Oh well, thanx
Tom,

 

[o1die]

If you want low power, get a celeron 430, which only uses 35 watts. For dual core, go with a 2140 which has a 1 meg cache ($48 oem at starmicro) and purchase a separate heatsink. Microcenter might also have some good closeout deals. I use a celeron 430, and it performs pretty well. Fry's has an antec 430w power supply for $20; check newegg also for a comparable deal. I have both a g31 (msi compaq) and g33 board made by ecs; both work fine. Can't answer your question about vista.

 

[Lightning983]

Thanx... i'm guessing 300W is already overkill, but i guess noone is making anything under that wattage
The celeron is only about 8-10$ cheaper, and i get another core for that so... i'll stick to the Core2 generation it's still very cheap.

I have a stock heatsink from the Core2 Quad in my main computer, so i'll just use that, i guess it should be fine


About the chipset, i know the G33 has a new south bridge, but does any of the board in this price range have RAID1 option? i'm curious, since this will be working 24/7 and i don't wanna loose any current data.

 

[mxnerd]

Why not get a low power Eee Box and be done with it? Just use USB to hook up extra storage you needed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...iption=eee+box&x=0&y=0 Either linux or XP will suffice your need.

If you insisted to assemble yourself. Then get an Intel mini-itx board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813121359

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813121342

 

[Lightning983]

Well i did look at the Atom, but the only ones i can get in my country only have a 100Mbit LAN (some Gigabyte Board), and i really don't wanna move files that slow.
I did look at the ASUS thing, but i can basically get much better components (the ones i wrote) for even less money...