Cheapo Server, good buy?

Muel

Muel

Muel

Soldato
Joined
26 Jun 2009
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Sheffield
Just bought a cheap system/bundle from a guy at work:

  • Antec Sonata 2 Case (Black, all I really care about)
  • 450W PSU (Antec so it'll be fine?)
  • Asus P5V-VM motherboard
  • Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8ghz dual core)
  • 1gb DDR2 (I had a matching DIMM, so added another as soon as I got it here).

There was a sound card and graphics card as well, but these are being sold. Paid £50 for it, thought it sounded a bit cheap. Good snappage? It will only take 1 SATA2 drive though so will need a RAID controller when I buy hard drives for it, which won't be for ages considering the current price. (Got a 120gb IDE drive for now, it'll do for running a web server and a Minecraft server).
 
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Aye, 95w TDP. But it's better than leaving my desktop on 24/7. (Idles at around 200w).

It's only a starting point after all. I know Ubuntu Server fairly well having run a VM for the last year or so for web dev, but never had a proper server so I've got a lot to learn yet.
 
Cheapest I can find one for is about £200?

It's not supposed to be a low powered file server anyway, it's a starting point that I'm going to upgrade around. For another £50 I could change the motherboard and RAM and it would have 8gb of DDR3.
 
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They look great, but they cost at least double what I paid.

I bought this mainly for the PSU and the case, the rest of it can be sold off immediately for a profit by the looks of the prices these bits are fetching on Ebay.

I won't be sticking with 775 on this. When it comes to motherboard upgrade time I'll grab some form of quad core CPU (possibly 6/8), and 8/16gb of RAM at the same time.

Eventually I hope to use it to host mini LAN parties. At the moment I've got it running a Minecraft server, and it seems to tick along rather nicely.
 
As already stated, this is simply a starting point. If I went out and built a £600 server today, it would still cost me £600 and I'd buy all the wrong stuff. By running this and upgrading over time (as the prices drop, which they always do over the years), I'll spend less, learn more and get the right stuff for me.

If I only spend another £50 on it, you're completely right, it would be worse spec for more money, but you can't get the kind of spec I'm thinking of upgrading to into a microserver, plus 4 hard drives is my bare minimum (4x2tb in RAID5).
 
What I've bought does the job for now, and once I've sold the bits I don't use, it'll have cost me £20. Maybe once I've bought the HDDs and had it running for a few months I'll decide a microserver is enough for what I want, in which case the rest of this server can be split and sold off for a profit.

Or maybe a full on server (like you built) is what I want, in which case again, HDDs are available and I can sell the rest off at a profit.

Or (most likely), I'll end up deciding that a desktop motherboard, an i5 and 8gb DDR3 is what it needs, in which case that upgrade path is open as well.

Out of interest, what are the leccy bills like when comparing proper server hardware and servers built with desktop hardware?
 
Exactly. I might be £50 down, but there's a new toy on my desk and I can sell it for a profit if I get sick of it, or upgrade it.

It's got 3 drives in at the moment. Only 1 is connected though. It is indeed old, but it's actually very quiet! All the HDD bays are rubber mounted, and it came with an aftermarket CPU cooler. The PSU is very quiet, and it has no case fans. (Doesn't need them, runs nice and cool).
 
It'll save me a fair bit of money over my old setup though. I had my desktop on 24/7 doing stuff, that idles at about 250-300w.

High-draw? It's only 95w. I'm used to a 140w AMD 965BE, and that's overclocked with no power saving enabled. :P (Because CnQ makes it crash).

It'll do for now. When I can afford the HDDs to upgrade it that'll be the first thing, after that I can decide whether it's the high performance or the low power draw route.
 
The biggest draw for me to this is to learn and spend very little. an HP Microserver would cost me £100 for no gain whatsoever to me, as I doubt very much this server will add £100 a year to my electricity bill, especially as I leave it off most of the time. (Unless I'm wanting to leave my trees to grow on Minecraft).

Desktop is a 140w AMD 965BE with no power saving enabled, because it crashes when it is, 2x4gb RAM, 2x ATI 5830s and 2x Samsung F3s. The 5830s alone can pull 175w each I seem to remember. I'd say at least 200w, seeing as the CPU is pulling 140w constantly on it's own. :P
 
It's spent the last week turned off. It's mainly a toy.

New info, I have knicked the C2D E6300 out of my (knackered) spare desktop. This is lower clocked than the Pentium D 820 (1.86ghz vs 2.8ghz), but I hear it out-performs it sometimes, plus it has a 65w TDP?

Anyways, I have secured a buyer for the 820, the motherboard and the RAM that are in the server now, so I grabbed 2x4gb of DDR3 for £24 posted (score), and intend to order http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-139-MS to seal the deal.

After this sale has happened, I will have either an E6300 or Pentium D 820, 8gb DDR3, a better motherboard and the total cost to me will be around £50. Surely this is better than £100 for a Microserver? Will it out-perform the Microserver even?
 
bigredshark said:
Good buy? Well if you wanted a random system to play with then yes, it's function and cheap. If you wanted a server then it's a terrible buy, old power heavy hardware when £50 more would have got you new low energy gear.

I think you've answered which of those you really wanted already but if you're surprised by the answers you're getting that's why - it's a terrible deal if you actually wanted a server.
Click to expand...

Well from what I have read already, the new build will be faster than a microserver for half the price, with a much wider upgrade path. It burns a bit more electricity, yes, but I estimate it will use less than 100w (average), so it'll cost less than £100 a year to run. Also for about £50, I can pick up a Q6600 and wack that in.

£100 for a microserver or a Q6600 with 8gb of DDR3? If you want something to share files 24/7 and cost as little as possible to run, then you'd go for a microserver. However if you want a toy that you can upgrade into a monster, that isn't going to be switched on 24/7, then the choice is obvious IMO.

Can we keep this on topic? It's not a microserver vs homebuilt server thread, it's about my server, and me learning stuff, playing about with a £50 desktop, seeing what I can actually get built for next to nothing.
 
EDIT: In fact, not worth the hassle. You're right, it's definitely not a server in the slightest.
 
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