I've got an old dual-core athlon lying around with a motherboard and RAM. Is it worth using this as a base for a home server or should I ship it on and look for something newer? I haven't got the money to buy any new parts at the moment, just got a few bits and bobs lying around.
It won't be the most energy efficient build but should be sufficient performance wise for most home server tasks. I'm still running an old Core2 E4500 in one of my machines and it does the job. I use lights out software to minimize it's power use.
I should be able to underclock it which will help. I'm not too worried about the energy efficiency at the moment as it will help warm my room in the winter (well, a tiny bit).
It should be fine depending on what you want to do with it. If it is a file and print server or even possibly a media server (plex is good) then it should be adequate. If on the other hand you expect to run a load of virtual machines, you have no chance.
I used to run an x2 3600, underclocked and undervolted in a mediaPC it was great I only moved away from it as I was using onboard mobo HD4200 GPU which struggled when everything moved to HD. energy wise it was about 40w for the whole system pretty reasonable really considering its age. For all the file transfer, bluray, stremaing playback etc and recording it was great otherwise.
