Fun Project: Help Build the Server!

[burton]

I think I may have just stumbled into the ultimate geek dream: free co-location! If I get it, the only thing I'm going to have to do is build a server. My mission is to construct a 4U rackmount box for under $500 with the most stable, and up-to-date technology available.

I've evaluated several paths and have waffled endlessly so far (Intel's marked history of stability and superior chipsets, AMD's performance and price advantage, etc etc) so I figure hey, why not throw it to the masses as well?

Bare minimum what I need is a 4U Rackmount case (lets fix the price on one at $150) and the best of what I can throw under the hood and stay under my target of $600. That's $350 worth of hardware to play around with people. Bare minimum the following is needed:

Motherboard
CPU/Heatsink-Fan
Ram
Hard Drive
Network Interface

Have fun now! And keep in mind, goal #1 is stability.

 

[Shalmanese]

Bleh $350? you could ave got a Tyan Dual mobo on launch if you wanted to. You need to spend a bit more $$$ for a server

Anyway, I am thinking
AMD 1600+ XP
Mobo Dont know if tyan make single CPU mobos but a Tyan if they do or a Gigabyte if they dont, preferably with a AMD chipset if you can still find one
RAM 256 - 512 depending on what you are doing
HD depends on what you are doing, probably RAID 0 with 2 80 gigs would be nice, RAID 1 might also be an option
NIC - Either Intel or 3Com

From newegg.com

XP1600+ - $115
Gigabyte GA-7DX+ - $88
RAM - 256MB DDR - $70
HD - Maxtor 80GB - $137
NIC - 3com - $32
Cooler - personal choice - $20
Total - way over $350.

 

[tweakmm]

You could get an old pentium III and one of the tried and tested stable mobo's. I'm sure you could find some stuff cheep on the FS/FT forums

 

[bigshooter]

What are you going to use it for? $500 for a good server is not really very much. You're going to have a hard time buying quality stuff that you would want in a server for that amount. If this is going to host anything important I'd try to get a little more cash.

 

[Daovonnaex]

You'll need ECC RAM, and you'll need reliability. For a mainboard, I looked at Supermicro's entry level PIII products, but they're $250. I recommend the Tyan TigerMP, is a steal at $181. I looked at the KR7A-133, since it supports ECC DDR SDRAM, but I wouldn't trust VIA chips on a server. So, here's what I recommend.

Case: Topower 4080 4U Rackmount (w/320w PSU)--$138
Mainboard: Tyan TigerMP--$181
CPU: 1x Duron 850MHz OEM (upgrade to dual Athlon MPs later)--$39
HSF: Thermalright SK6--$28
Memory-- 1 Crucial PC2100 ECC 256mb DIMM--$90
HDD: Maxtor 7200RPM ATA100 20gb HDD--$69 ($62 for 5400 rpm)
NIC: DLink 10/100--$9

Total: $554

 

[Snoop]

AMD ATHLON THUNDERBIRD 950MHz 61.00
MSI K7N420 PRO nForce MCP 142.00
ALPHA PAL8045T. Heat Sink ONLY 35.00
Panaflo Axial Fan 80mm 38cfm for cpu heatsink 12.00
WESTERN DIGITAL 60GB 7200RPM 112.00
2 x 128-256 megs Crucial PC2100 80.00

Total= $442 w/o shipping all from newegg.com
Around 400 is the best your going to do if you want to use high quality components.

 

[dowxp]

1.6 A -150 @ 2.2
P4B266 -150
40gb 120GXP -100
512 - 120

~500.

 

[thraxes]

don't have hosting but I could have a good server machine from a friend (he's selling it either to me or another geek that i know) , check out FS/FT for something similar:

Dual P3-933 socket-370
512MB ECC
not sure about the board though (can't remember)
2x60GB IDE drives in raid mirror config
Intel dual-port 10/100 NIC


It's not the newest but for a low traffic apache web server it's OK

We ran the intranet of a few LAN partys (300-400 gamers) with that thing pretty well, we did have a seperate MY-SQL machine though to take the database load.

 

[burton]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, and yeah, believe me, if I could I would spend more than $500, but I know that realistically all this machine is going to be used for is light apache serving and some low load mysql with a few nondemanding background processes for me and my crew's IRC habits

And the low budget is the reason why stability is the key issue; a fast machine is useless as a server if its not stable, I'd rather take the performance hit to have something that's not going to mysteriously drop offline in a data center somewhere on me. Right now my homespun and run server is a P166 with 48mb and it does just fine.

Right now I'm considering ebaying a prebuilt rack server on ebay, something of the PII calibur with alot of ram and scsi... If you watch carefully its sinful some of the deals one can come up with... case and point my buddy pulled a quad PII xeon off of there for $700.