£250 for a silent server, possible?

[celliott]

I'm doing my head in trying to decide between a NAS or a cheap Celeron/Atom based server. I don't want to mess about trying to get old parts on eBay etc, id rather get new parts so I know they are reliable.

I need:
1. As Quiet as possible when running
2. 2x 500GB Drives in RAID-1
The rest of the spec doesnt matter. Base unit only of course.

Is it possible to do this for £250, if so any specs would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[decto]

It does depend on how quiet is quiet.

Options on OCUK are something like:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD6400AAKS) £42.99
(£50.51) £85.98
(£101.02)
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 / nForce 630i Chipset (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Intel Celeron E1200 1.6Ghz Dual-Core Processor (LGA775) - Retail £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £19.99
(£23.49) £19.99
(£23.49)
Antec NSK 4480B Mini Tower Case (Black) - 380W Earth Watts PSU £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
Sub Total : £225.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £41.46
Total : £278.35


Could have been a little cheaper with the drives and less ram but the little extra makes sense.

An extra £20 would get you E5200 which is faster and would run cooler as it's 45mn

The case is pretty quiet, 1 3speed rear fan and the PSU fan.

I have one as a server and I can barely hear it's on though I wouldn't want it next to the bed.

Would be fine in the corner of a room or as mine is ... in the loft. The drives are more audible than anything.

For a cheaper build I'd go for a cheap AM2 matx board and a low end X2 CPU or VIA / atom do some nice boards with raid 0/1 which would replace the CPU/mobo in the above setup. Just not on OCUK so can't link...


Of course the easy option is to just get a NAS .. but that depends what else you want from your system and of course ... if you have an OS to run on your server.

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[celliott]

OS wouldnt be an issue as I would run Linux.

An atom based system does look the way to go, although I am having great difficulty locating boards with RAID functionality.

Wouldn't a system like that without a front fan mean the HDDs get a bit toasty?

 

[celliott]

I was originally going to get the £100 icybox nas + 2 drives. As it's only an extra £50 ish to have a Server instead, I thought that sounded like the better option? The icybox nas is great in what services it allows you to run, but being a bit of a Linux fanatic I would rather run things on an actual box.

 

[decto]

There is enough space in the case to space the drives apart and allow airflow. Air will be drawn in across the drives.

I have 3 x 1TB drives stacked and a system (80GB) drive running XP. No issues with drive temps though I can hear when the defrag kicks in!

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