As part of my sandybridge upgrade I was planning on using my old rig as a home file/media server. The thing is the hardware spec is a bit OTT for a server so I would value your opinions. Should I sell the CPU, motherboard, RAM and HDD and buy a replacement or keep what I have and try undervolting it? I am intending to use the server for back ups, file storage and media streaming. My current hardware is: Q6600 (not the G0 stepping) Abit IP35-Pro 4Gb Giel low latency RAM 70Gb WD Raptor HDD The sale of the above would have to cover the cost of any new hardware as I justified the cost of my upgrade against re-using my old PC as a server. I also have a thread in the software section about which OS to use for my server if anyone has any opinions on that!
Given that new hardware will probably come in at roughly the same cost (or probably more) of what you intend to sell your current hardware for I would keep it and undervolt the CPU as required. Whilst your "server" may be a bit overkill I have always found it useful to have a "backup" pc that can easily be turned into a basic gaming pc when my main one is down.
Since you could recoup most of the costs of purchase by selling what you have, I would. Your current rig, at least not underclocked, is probably going to be running you in the area of 70-80w at idle, maybe even a bit more depending on the PSU in your case. That is quite a bit and I'd imagine you'd be wanting another HDD in there anyway, as 70GB just ain't much. I am building a low cost/low power draw file server right now. Current hardware planned or purchased is Rosewill Blackbone case Antec Earthwatts 380d PSU (80+ bronze rated) MSI 760GM-E51 board Sempron 140 Mushkin Enhanced Silverline DDR3 1333 2GB (single stick) 1TB Samsung F3 (eventually going to add a 5400rpm 2 or 3TB drive to that) Total cost (not including a the 2nd HDD) is about $240 for everything. I have been slowly buying the parts as I have been seeing sales (so far have case, memory and HDD). Since you'd probably reuse the case and PSU that would cut out about $70-80 of the cost. Though I do recommend down the road if you have an old PSU to get an 80+ bronze rated PSU eventually. Some of the older PSU burn a lot power when off (some are as high as 10-15w, compared to <1W for most new 80+ or better rated PSU). They are cheap too, at about $30-40 for a low watt 80+ bronze PSU (you'll save the much in a couple of years in efficiency if you run the system alot, especially if you keep your current hardware) From looking at other people's builds, a non-undervolted/underclocked sempron and similar setup should probably draw around 30-35w at idle HDD spun down and maybe 60w at full load (which I doubt it'll ever get to, even with GbE full saturated). Undervolting and underclocking (but not so far as to impact performance) CPU and memory and you could probably get it down around 25w at idle and maybe 45-50w at full load. Compared to the 70-90w at idle of your current system (guessing here obviously) and probably around 150-180w at full load. If you leave the system on 24/7 that adds up to a lot of money in a year's electricity bills. Where I am in the states at 14 cents per kw/hr that comes out to about $1 per year per watt of power consumption. Just at idle that is about $40-60 a year in extra electric bill. Of course if you undervolt and underclock both setups and have agressive HDD spin down and S3 sleep settings the cost difference would probably be a lot less, probably only $5-30 a year depending on how much access the thing got.
That is a good point which I had not thought about. Sorry should have added I have 4TB of data all ready but I did not list those disks as I would obviously be keeping them. One vote each way so far!
I'd keep the hardware. It would always be nice to have the option of encoding media, running a web server or game server, messing about with VMs and all the other things you can do with a slightly more powerful machine. The only issue is the cost of powering the machine, but compared to the amount some people spend running folding rigs it's not that much...
I can tell you what you have there is fine for a server. Im a network admin and a few of dev servers that we run web apps on in the office have less spec than that. if its just a media server that is more than enough with the quad and 4Gb. i recently set up a media server at home with ubuntu and 4Gb and a old dual core. it works like a dream so you wont have any issues. The load on them is minimal. i even ran a minecraft server on mine at one point and no issues. Mines was in an old hp computer case aswell that just hides away in the corner of my room. William
I'd stick with what you've got. It'll be a useful backup rig, as xaser04 says. Also, i'm just lazy, so selling all your gear when what you've got is okay seems like effort to me.
I'd stick with it, bit of extra grunt helps if you want to running a PS3 media server/airvideo server for live transcoding of video and as sb1991 said possibility of running VM's as well is always handy
Sell it and buy a 2 bay NAS like Synology 211j. Low powered and low maintenace. Set up and can forget about it. NAS great for sharing files and media serving. Edit: just noticed that you already have 4TB of data. Meaning tougher decision as you would have to buy a 4 bay NAS which would push up the price.
There's a lot to recommend a home server build from really low end parts though. I leave my underclocked/undervolted Celeron server on 24/7 and have not really noticed much of a change to my electricity bill. I can still use it as a spare PC should I need to (obviously not for games), and it was a nice little project to build it too. I'd sell the power hungry old rig, and build a nice low power server. It's also got a decent RAID card in it, so it's FAST as a server. A NAS will stream stuff around the home, but if you ever want to use them as a back up device over the network, it can be a bit painful.
Synology bad server in raid will amaze you. I got the ds1511+ and it's way too fast. Plus it has it's own hybrid raid. Great for storing music, films, home videos, pictures. And viewing them is just as easy. Via ps3 via Internet login from anywhere from iPhone app. The functionality and features are unbeatable.
To be honest I was think converting a dual core intel Pc with an adaptec raid card - the custom way but after reading the aftersales support these guys give and the easy use style I gave in. My mum can now log in and listen to her music while reminiscing to old family home videos with no really difficulty
