Hi all! Been awhile since I have posted, but I got such excellent assistance last time I thought I would come back and see if anyone could advise me a bit. So here is my issue: I have been running a personal web/mail server on what used to be my primary PC until several months ago when I built a new one. The server is several years old. It is running an Ausus K8V Deluxe mainboard with an Athlon 3200+ CPU, and 1GB DDR3200 ram. The case is an enormous tower with built in liquid cooling (it was pretty sweet years ago lol). Anyway, the thing is a beast, sucks power, and is just plain not efficient. I also have had issues with the mobo. The onboard sound and lan no longer function. My question is what should I do with this thing? I want to continue my webserver and possibly add homeserver capabilities and I do not know if I should completely scrap this thing and by something brand new, or if I should just buy a new case and psu and continue using what I have. I was looking at maybe a low power atom cpu or something along those lines, but I really don't know. The webserver will not be heavily taxed to any extent. I am about to deploy to Afghanistan so I want it to be able to stream media without any major hiccups but that is about it. Any advice anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!! Nate
Stream regular quality xvid dvd rips? Stream Blu Ray rips? Im guessing if the function wont be changing much, go with a low end AMD cpu and rebuild from there. The low end cpu market is better suited with AMD while higher end needs by Intel. Go with a gigabyte mobo, ~300 watt Corsair PSU, maybe a bit closer to 400 watts for head room. An ~$80 video card(ATI) should do. On the RAM side, throw in a gig or 2 of DDR2,and I would salvage the CD/DVD drive you use now. If your dead set on that case you have keep it, but you could easily fit this build in a small case and still get descent enough cooling.
If you are just streaming and serving, the skip the video card, and get something with onboard video. I would go with a nice, small case...gigabyte makes some very nice basic ATX cases for less than $40, you could go smaller...but it would probably cost more, and it would give you less room for hard drives (the main feature of a file server). A 300W corsair should be more than enough unless you have a lot of drives or a good hardware RAID card. For the price, it is almost silly to buy a 1GB stick of ram...2GB is only a bit more, and will give you better performance when streaming heavy files. Gigabyte is almost certainly the best brand of mainboard given all the factors. As Xplorer4 said, keep the dvd drive to save a few bucks on the new build...unless you decide to go with bluray instead... As for the Arfhanistan thing... Are you trying to sream video from the US to where you will be? Are you going to bring the server with you, to stream to you and your buddie's laptops? Will the server just be left at home for your family, with no streaming to a desert on the other side of the world? The reason I ask is because the first one seems rather unlikely to work, or at least it won't work well. The second would work fine, but I'm not sure you would have the space, or rather that you would want to spend your limited space on this. I guess if you were streaming to your whole barracks, then space would not be such a big issue, as others might let you keep the system in their space.
