£500 - £600 small server spec

dansussex · 22 Aug 2012 at 17:43

Hi,

I'm putting together a little server for a side project. The plan is to run a few services (svn, project tools on web server, backup to DVD) on linux and to test software I'm writing, eventually deployed on multiple VMs. I suspect that this will be memory / disk speed bound rather than a CPU hog, but ability to multi-process / thread nicely means multi-core is good. I'm thinking 4 * 6Gb/s SATA as RAID-5 for disks and 8GB RAM is a sensible start if there is space to expand. In any case, CPU speed not being the key factor and built in RAID-5 and cheap would seem to suggest AMD, yes?

And so I have...
AMD Bulldozer FX-6 Six Core 6100 Black Edition 3.30Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Dirt Showdown PC Game **£15 Cashback** £99.95
Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard ** FREE NEXUIZ GAME ** £53.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £35.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £64.99 * 4 = £259.96

Cheapest graphics card and DVD RW drive for install / backup I can find without taking an old machine apart:
EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 512MB Passive GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card (512-P3-1301-KR) £23.99
Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
10 Pack - Verbatim DVD+RW 4-Speed 4.7GB (43488) £4.98

That spec then implies a certain amount of power, case space and SATA connectors:
Cooler Master GX Lite 500W '80 Plus' Power Supply £35.99
Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower Case - Black/Orange £29.99
Akasa AK-CBSA05-50BK Super slim SATA rev 3.0 data cable with securing latches - 50cm, Black £3.49 * 5 = £17.45

An extra fan may not be needed, but for four quid I'm willing to have some redundancy. This will probably live at home, so filters and blocking for the extra case vents might be nice:
Xilence Pro Fan XPF120 120mm - Black £3.98
Akasa Aluminium 12cm Fan Filter - GRM120-AL01-BK £2.99 * 2 = £5.98
Foam Silencing Kit - 120mm Fan £1.99 * 2 = £3.98

Total: £605.33

I'm a long way out of the habit of DIY PCs...
Anything I've forgotten?
Anything here obviously won't work with other bits?
I'm trying to minimise spend, I'd rather get down to £500 from the £600 spec I have - maybe I can live with smaller / slower disks or 4 core CPU? Anything else here I could obviously do for less money?

Thanks in advance!
Dan

dansussex · 25 Aug 2012 at 22:26

I'm being thick, VNC and a network install would save me £47.

I'm wondering (and the manual isn't helping) - can I do a raid-1 pair and a non-raid (or some other raid) disk on that motherboard? e.g. use RAID for stuff that matters and non-raid for virtual machines that can be recreated more or less automatically.

danewesley · 25 Aug 2012 at 22:41

put this together, lower end cpu, specced an apu, so no gpu getting in the way, but you can have, much better modular psu, 120gb ssd for boot, 4 x 1tb hdd's, 16gb ram (with space left for another 16gb!!!), mobo has 6 x sata 6 connectors and psu supports 6 sata power too so enough for everything you need. Fans and grills/foam etc are extra, i think they are things that can be added anytime after, the build shouldnt get too hot right away anyway.

YOUR BASKET
1 x OCZ Agility 3 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-120G) £71.99
1 x Gigabyte A75M-UD2H AMD A75 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard ** FREE NEXUIZ GAME ** £71.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £63.98
1 x TeamGroup Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED316G1600HC11DC) £59.95
4 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) £57.98 (£231.92)
1 x AMD A4-3400 2.70GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor (AD3400OJGXBOX) £46.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower Case - Black £26.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
4 x OcUK Value SATA-II 45cm Red Data Cable (NLRB-302LOCK) £2.59 (£10.36)
Total : £599.18 (includes shipping : FREE).

danewesley · 25 Aug 2012 at 22:43

oh i only added 4 sata cables, you will get a few in the box with the motherboard anyway, hopefully they give you a sata 6 one too for the ssd.

Dane

Edit: For the Mobo i specced from the site.

Chipset:
5 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors supporting up to 5 SATA 6Gb/s devices
1 x eSATA 6Gb/s port on the back panel supporting up to 1 SATA 6Gb/s device (Note 7)
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and JBOD

JonJ678 · 26 Aug 2012 at 02:46

Could you expand on the word "server"? That is, do you want ECC ram, redundant disks, redundant power supplies? Should probably get a motherboard with built in graphics instead of the 8400GS.

I think you can get 2tb hard drives for around £75, so 1tb for £65 is probably a bad deal. Two raid 1 is better than a single raid 5 in terms of data integrity but would reduce storage capacity further.

I'm not sure what warrants the six core phenom either. I'm running similar things on a hp microserver. That's a long way under budget. I believe the next model up is a similarly good buy if you want something faster. Well worth considering as an alternative to the home build approach, HP are ridiculously undercutting the market at present.

dansussex · 26 Aug 2012 at 13:11

Dane - thanks, I'll take a look at that properly later but that looks like an interestingly different set of choices to think about.

Jon - this will be server as in a build and test server for development. I see svn, jenkins, apache running a wiki and java compilation for development. Then multiple virtual machines for testing networking code, which is why I'm thinking 8-16GB RAM , multi-core and a couple of TB of disk. This doesn't have to offer a network file system or a publicly visible service so only needs to be fairly reliable but I'd be upset at data loss. ECC RAM is probably a luxury (although one I'd happily take), redundant disks are a good idea, redundant power supplies not needed. I'm not planning to use a monitor, so no graphics is OK.

The HP does look good value (even if I have to add hard disks), and is tempting. If it turns out that I *really* need more memory I can probably find a use for a little box.

JonJ678 · 26 Aug 2012 at 13:32

The tiny HP goes up to 8gb reliably and cheaply (£50 got me 8gb of ECC Kingston). People run it with 16gb, but it's twitchy about which sticks it'll accept. The next step up is probably a four ram slot board.

I'd expect it to slow down when running half a dozen virtual machines. Some people on here are using it for that purpose however. If the virtual machine has to host windows then you'll have problems, but linux will sit quite happily in 128mb of ram using negligible cpu.

You would indeed need to add hard disks, since the box costs less than £200 this is fair enough really. It comes with a small one intended for the OS, though most people use the usb port inside the case for the operating system. It'll hold four hard drives easily, five with an extra cable, six with a mounting bracket and an e-sata to sata cable.

It makes a very, very good fileserver/nas if you decide to upgrade to something quicker. See if you can track down some benchmarks. The built in CPU is not quick, but if the tasks are I/O bound, it doesn't really matter how quick the CPU is. Compilation seems to go by quickly enough, though I'm expecting a kernel rebuild to take a few hours. Food for thought anyway.