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1

Hey guys!

I want a small server for home use and I could really use some help on making the decision on whether to buy something pre-built or to build something from scratch.

The intended use is for storing my library of 1080p video content, photos, etc that currently resides in my main desktop, but also function as a home web server. I was hoping to get something that I could use for playing with personal development projects hosted at home so I would need something that could handle running IIS for .NET projects and either SQL Server or MySQL.

If anyone has any recommended builds or has something like this running at home already please let me know as I'd really appreciate the input! 

 

 

 

2

Have you got any old desktops around. Basic stuff like File Servering and small web servers don't require that much processing power.

3

Unfortunately no, I don't have any old hardware that could be re purposed for this.

4

Okay.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1RtUx

 Main Question, Why these parts????

Well an APU is good, it kills two birds with one stone. Servers are about Processing Grunt, so you have a quad core with a small GPU that will be needed for your GUI or CLI of your chosen OS. The stock heatsink is fine. However you may wish for a non-stock one to reduce noise.

The motherboard has a good assortment of I/O and expansion lanes. If your planning on using a raid card, well you have your PCI-e 16x lane available (reason I went for an APU so there wouldn't be a dedicated GPU in there). It has 4 SATA ports for your HDDs, if you require more, look at a different mobo. It also has s Gigabit NIC, which will provided some nice file transfer rates.

4GB of RAM is enough, you may wish to push to 8GB as this CPU will be capable of small game servers as well.

Cheap case and a powerful enough (even with several drives) good brand name PSU.

All you need is to add HDDs and an optical if you require it.

5

Thanks very much for your help!

I'm looking at the Asus F2A55-M LE motherboard since it has 6 SATA ports which would be useful as I already have 4 drives ready to use and I'd like to get another one as those are already quite full.

I might house this in a Bitfenix Prodigy case as I've wanted to do something with one of those since I first saw them.

Now I just need to get the funds together!

 

 

6

Another option that might be worth looking into is buying some refurbished server hardware.

I recently picked up an HP DL185 with 12 drive bays and a quad port GB nic, and I use that as a nas, and I have another HP DL380 that I have all my services hosted from and they work great. The ECC memory and redundant power supplies are just a bonus. Not to mention a lot of replacement parts can be found fairly cheap.