Server hardware review

[Jawawithagun]

Less capacity- he's planning on 1.2TB

It was just an example. Higher-capacity ones are easy enough to find.
Example 1
Example 2

[Uraniun235]

The K8N Neo4 is $88 more expensive, and doesnt have builtin video. So I need to find a cheap PCI video card. The 4 extra SATA ports are well worth the +$120-140 price difference between the 2 setups(allowing for ~$40-$60 for a PCI video card). Since the K8N is a ATX mobo, it has more PCI & PCIe slots sot this isnt a problem.

So... you're paying ~$120 for four SATA ports?

Am I missing something here?

[Xon]

So... you're paying ~$120 for four SATA ports?

Am I missing something here?

Cost for one of those new starts at $137 AUS in my state.

While I could probably get one off ebay, I have had zero experiance in using ebay.

[Uraniun235]

Oh, barf. Yeah, in your case I guess $120 is a decent price to pay for 4 SATA ports.

I forgot about how buying computer parts or internet service in Australia is like making out with a french horn player - you'll invariably wind up with a fist in your ass.

[Xon]

Ah crap. The Opteron 146's I had selected was out of stock, restock in "2 weeks".

The damn thing is still cheaper than an Athlon64 3200+.

I might go for the Opteron 144 for $19 less & clocked 0.2 ghz less, or just go for a Opteron 165 dual core if they are in stock. See how it pans out. Got a week or so before the rest of the hardware comes in anyway.

Might just end up waiting for the restock.

[Ace Pace]

Ah crap. The Opteron 146's I had selected was out of stock, restock in "2 weeks".

The damn thing is still cheaper than an Athlon64 3200+.

I might go for the Opteron 144 for $19 less & clocked 0.2 ghz less, or just go for a Opteron 165 dual core if they are in stock. See how it pans out. Got a week or so before the rest of the hardware comes in anyway.

Might just end up waiting for the restock.

If you want to use the server to host games or anything like that, a pair of dual core Opterons is definetly in the "holy fast server" category for games.

[Pezzoni]

<2 pence>You might be better dropping down the range a bit on RAM and CPU, and spend the money getting 4x the absolute biggest drives possible - I can't imagine a fileserver needing that kind of power</2 pence>

How are you planning on configuring the drives? I'd personally (although I admiddedly don't know all that much on this side of things), go for RAID 10, which gives both performance and redundancy benafits: I wouldn't be to sure about aiming for a RAID type which doesn't offer redundancy in a fileserver.

[phongn]

I might go for the Opteron 144 for $19 less & clocked 0.2 ghz less, or just go for a Opteron 165 dual core if they are in stock. See how it pans out. Got a week or so before the rest of the hardware comes in anyway.

I just bought an Opteron 165 and will assemble tomorrow night or so. But you might as well save your cash if you're going for a "mere" fileserver.

[The Dude]

I believe in standard movie length of 2.5 hours being encoded with xvid + ac3 audio being at least 1.4gb in size. 45 minute TV eps a minimum of 350mb. 45 minute HDTV 720p + ac3 audio, 700mb.

Even for an HDTV broadcast, that's just ~15MB/minute, or about 250kB/s. I regularly stream video at home over 802.11g and even over 802.11b occasionally.

Gigabit is major overkill if you expect video streaming to be your primary use. It also probably won't help you much if everything else in your house is 100Mbit. If it's onboard, go for it, but if it costs extra, buy bigger HDDs instead.

[Ace Pace]

I believe in standard movie length of 2.5 hours being encoded with xvid + ac3 audio being at least 1.4gb in size. 45 minute TV eps a minimum of 350mb. 45 minute HDTV 720p + ac3 audio, 700mb.

Even for an HDTV broadcast, that's just ~15MB/minute, or about 250kB/s. I regularly stream video at home over 802.11g and even over 802.11b occasionally.

Gigabit is major overkill if you expect video streaming to be your primary use. It also probably won't help you much if everything else in your house is 100Mbit. If it's onboard, go for it, but if it costs extra, buy bigger HDDs instead.

If I'm not mistaken, atleast one port in every Nforce4 motherboard today will be Gbit ethernet, due to it being intergrated into the chipset.

[Xon]

<2 pence>You might be better dropping down the range a bit on RAM and CPU, and spend the money getting 4x the absolute biggest drives possible

The 300gb drives I'm buying are are 0.69 cents AUS per gb. I can buy more of them and thus more space that going for the largest single drive. Which is why I want lots of ports to plug the drives into

I can not get a cheaper CPU without ditching the motherboard(and I cant get a feature rich motherboard with the cheaper socket type.)

There is a cheaper Opteron, but thats 19 fucking dollars. It isnt worth it.

A socket 939 motherboard is the only thing with the features I want (4 or more SATA ports) which is avaliable in Australia within a reasonable range (aka locally). Anything else either costs a fucking mint, or just isnt sold any more.

As for the RAM, I've had scenarios on my current fileserver where memory usage has peaked at over 1gb, and it has 512mb of ram. The 2gb is highly likely to be put in my desktop, and it's 1gb (2x512mb sticks) into the fileserver.

- I can't imagine a fileserver needing that kind of power</2 pence>

"Demand expands to fit the available supply". There is a lot I can not do on my current box that I would like to.

Gigabit is major overkill if you expect video streaming to be your primary use. It also probably won't help you much if everything else in your house is 100Mbit. If it's onboard, go for it, but if it costs extra, buy bigger HDDs instead.

It is integrated into the chipset, than means it is free. It actualy costs money to remove the feature. More often than not, they just remove the physical interface, but the chipset still supports the "removed" functionaility. This is why modern motherboards still offer "legacy ports" It costs utterly nothing to include, and actually costs bucket loads to remove.

To be honest, I didnt even think of the dual gigabit nics on the motherboard when I selected it. That it had a gigabit nic was enough.

But now that I realize it supports it, I'll use it.

• I store my server in my home's spare room.
• It has a desk.
• I'm going to have another desktop computer for common usage.
• There is only 1 network point in the room, and I only have 1 gigabit switch + my adsl modem/router connected to it.

Thus to enable all the computers with gigabit nics to actually connect at gigabit speeds, I'll plug my tobe 2nd desktop into the 2nd gigabit nic on the server. Then I'll bridge the 2 nics so it is acting as a single network. Thus all my computers can talk to each other and to the 'net