Cheapo Server, good buy?

Muel · 5 Dec 2011 at 20:22

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?

Essexraptor · 5 Dec 2011 at 20:50

Muel said:
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?

You seem to be doing well

Would be interesting to quite a few if you could manage a system build log along the way? We see loads of uber gamimg rigs but not much else.

It's a project that seems to working out for you and if you could share your ups and downs along the way with OS and hardware issues etc it would be a nice touch

Good luck and happy hunting!

Muel · 5 Dec 2011 at 21:29

Will do.

Motherboard and a few other bits ordered.

bigredshark · 5 Dec 2011 at 22:18

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.

daz · 5 Dec 2011 at 22:50

We sold ~50 Pentium 4 rackmount servers with their hard disks removed for a total of £200 recently. We just wanted rid of them with no hassle!

Muel · 6 Dec 2011 at 00:12

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.

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.

paradigm · 6 Dec 2011 at 07:35

But your "server" isn't a "server" is it. I think this is the problem.

Something that isn't going to be on 24/7 (or even switched on much at all) isn't a "server". If it were, you wouldn't be using home-brew hardware anyway, no matter how much "faster" it is for the same cash.

Thread should be in General Hardware, if you wanted a nice back-slap about the hardware you got for your cash. Oddly though that's also all irrelevant because you're selling it all, therefore the thread as laid out in the OP is utterly pointless.

Muel · 6 Dec 2011 at 07:45

EDIT: In fact, not worth the hassle. You're right, it's definitely not a server in the slightest.

101001101 · 9 Dec 2011 at 23:55

Muel said:
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).

Crap buy, go on eBay you can buy a dual socket Quad Core Xeon server for about £100, its all about the potential, note you did say "server" thats hardly a server its not even a foot stool.