Building a new server, recommendations welcome! THX

[DWW]

Well, building a somewhat intense application server. I want it to be as redundant and reliable as possible without paying too much $$$. This is what I've spec'd out so far... tell me what you guys think, im not a hardware pro so does it sound decent?

Antec PLUS1080AMG Case w/ 430W PSU
Intel S845WD11U 845E Motherboard with onboard LAN, VGA, RAID and ECC support
Intel P4 2.4 GHz w/ 533 MHz bus
512 MB Crucial pc2100 ECC RAM
2x Western Digital 80GB special edition drives for raid mirroring (8 Meg cache)
52x LG CDRW
UPS (not sure what I need, preferably something that lasts 2-3 hours if they aren't really hugely expensive)

Basically data redundancy is important but I can't afford SCSI. So I'm planning to use the onboard RAID controller and do a mirroring setup and then from time to time, use the CDRW to back up to CDR when need be.

Any advice on this system? I wanted a HyperThreading enabled XEON but the Intel motherboards only seem to come in dual CPU setups for XEON and cost ~$400! I heard that new P4 with HyperThreading and 800 bus is coming out, any clue how long I'd have to wait and how much extra they'd cost? I've never programmed anything HT specific but I'm interested in getting into it... I've got into threaded programming more recently.

Any pointers on my first server is appreciated... are these parts fairly stable given the money bracket I have to work with? ($1000 US)

 

[dexvx]

If you really want Xeons, look out for dell server deals. You simply cannot compete with the price that dell offers.

 

[DWW]

I just played on dell's site and its too costly to buy from them
I have to make do with $1000 US budget.

 

[mechBgon]

An APC 750XL runs a comparable server for about an hour where I work, and is in the $500 area. Remember when looking at UPS's that the VA rating is not necessarily a gauge of how long it will run, only its maximum load. The 750XL, for example, can be beefed up with additional battery modules for more runtime (over 36 hours!), but it's still a 750VA unit.

I don't know for sure, but I think Intel boards will use PC2700 memory when using a 533MHz-bus CPU. Considering that the onboard VGA wants a bit of the memory bandwidth, you might get a slight performance boost just by slapping an old GeForce2MX in there, also.

Have you considered an AMD alternative, perhaps an AthlonXP 2100+ on an A7N266-VM?