Hi, time for a fun speccing challenge for you guys 
I currently have a server at home which is basically my old PC but with a bunch of hard drives stuck in it. It's big and hot and noisy and guzzles electricity since it's got parts in it that were very powerful for their time, and it was built for gaming. I'm looking to replace this with a purpose-built server, specifically built to be quiet and efficient (and preferably small).
It'll be used as a file server, web server, media server, source control server, build server (so it'll need at least a bit of grunt to get through build tasks), bittorrent client and whatever else I fancy installing on it.
Number one priority is noise - this is going to be kept on 24/7 not too far from the bedroom and I don't want it annoying my other half
Priority number 2 is efficiency - again it'll be on 24/7 and I don't want it costing me the earth.
It absolutely has to have gigabit ethernet as it'll be the most heavily used machine on the network, which is all gigabit.
It also must have at least 4 SATA connectors, but I've seen some motherboards with 6, which would be really nice - I've currently got one spare hard drive sat in a box I'd like to get into play.
If possible I'd like it to be small, but I appreciate that this requirement often pushes up the cost a lot so don't worry too much about it.
I already have all the hard drives and optical drives I'll need, and mouse/keyboard/monitor won't be needed as it'll be headless. That also implies that graphics are unimportant, so the quietest/most efficient option is preferable - whether that's a low-powered card or on-board graphics.
Lastly, I don't have a strict budget for this, but I was hoping it would cost somewhere around £200. I think that's feasible given all the bits I don't need and that it doesn't need to be particularly powerful. If not though, £300 is probably the most I'd be willing to pay.
Sorry if I've waffled on, I do like to be precise when giving a spec... for a spec!
Thanks in advance, people!
I currently have a server at home which is basically my old PC but with a bunch of hard drives stuck in it. It's big and hot and noisy and guzzles electricity since it's got parts in it that were very powerful for their time, and it was built for gaming. I'm looking to replace this with a purpose-built server, specifically built to be quiet and efficient (and preferably small).
It'll be used as a file server, web server, media server, source control server, build server (so it'll need at least a bit of grunt to get through build tasks), bittorrent client and whatever else I fancy installing on it.
Number one priority is noise - this is going to be kept on 24/7 not too far from the bedroom and I don't want it annoying my other half
Priority number 2 is efficiency - again it'll be on 24/7 and I don't want it costing me the earth.
It absolutely has to have gigabit ethernet as it'll be the most heavily used machine on the network, which is all gigabit.
It also must have at least 4 SATA connectors, but I've seen some motherboards with 6, which would be really nice - I've currently got one spare hard drive sat in a box I'd like to get into play.
If possible I'd like it to be small, but I appreciate that this requirement often pushes up the cost a lot so don't worry too much about it.
I already have all the hard drives and optical drives I'll need, and mouse/keyboard/monitor won't be needed as it'll be headless. That also implies that graphics are unimportant, so the quietest/most efficient option is preferable - whether that's a low-powered card or on-board graphics.
Lastly, I don't have a strict budget for this, but I was hoping it would cost somewhere around £200. I think that's feasible given all the bits I don't need and that it doesn't need to be particularly powerful. If not though, £300 is probably the most I'd be willing to pay.
Sorry if I've waffled on, I do like to be precise when giving a spec... for a spec!
Thanks in advance, people!
