Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:53 am
Yeah... when a lot of people hear "server", they think "high end". This need not be the case. Yes, production servers in a corporate environment (or to serve a high-traffic web site) need to have multiple CPU cores, lots of RAM, and high-performance disks. But for a home server this is overkill.
Until very recently, my home file server was an ancient Slot A Athlon system. I have finally replaced it with a Socket 939 dual-core Athlon64 (so still "obsolete" components by modern standards), and I figure that will probably be good for several years. Even with a several-year-old CPU, it has plenty of horsepower to serve files (even with software RAID-5).
A dual-core CPU and 2 GB of RAM should be plenty for a home file server.
I do suggest getting a motherboard that supports ECC memory, and using ECC DIMMs; this is my one concession to using "server" hardware for a home server. When you're entrusting a box with all of your data, data integrity is critical!
A full-tower case is probably overkill unless you intend to put a huge pile of hard drives in the thing. You will want to make sure that whatever case you get has good ventilation around the drive bays though; this can be a hidden advantage of going with a bigger case, even if you don't need all of the bays.
Upgrade your network to gigabit, if you haven't already. If you're still running 100 mbit Ethernet, the network will be the bottleneck!
Decide whether you want to optimize for power consumption, since this box will probably be left powered up 24x7. Depending on how expensive electricity is where you live, it can add up over time. A dual-core CPU will use less power than a quad core, and you probably won't notice much (if any) difference in performance for typical home file server workload. Disk drives are also available in standard or low-power models. For example, Western Digital has their "Green" drives, which use less power but have longer access times.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.