), forcing me to move these files out onto the other computers in the house which have plenty of spare space. Rather than buying yet another external hard drive, I decided a home server would be a better idea, since it wouldn't be tied to a computer, it could be expanded to accommodate more drives, and it could do more than simply hold a bunch of 1s and 0s.Since I wanted to do this on the cheap, I bought all of my components second-hand (bar the case and hard drive). I scored some bargains, considering that all of them were new or nearly-new. The components I bought are as follows:
- AMD Athlon II X3 400e 2.2Ghz (45W energy-efficient model)
- Asus M3N78-AM motherboard with GeForce 8200 graphics
- 2GB DDR2-800 RAM
- Corsair CX400 PSU
- Samsung F3 EcoGreen 2TB hard drive
- Cheap but cheerful Akasa heatsink + 92mm fan
- El-cheapo Asus case
Hardware:
First up, the CPU - it's a triple-core, but the real draw is that it's the energy-efficient model, with a TDP of 45W rather than 65W. With a cheap cooler, it idles at around 28-32 degrees (ambient is about 22 degrees), and even after several hours of folding, it's not gone past 40 degrees at all. That's with just the cooler, no case fans running at all. Pretty amazing tbh.
The hard drive is Samsung's newest F3 EcoGreen models, that supposedly use less power. I've got no way to verify this, but apart from the "WHOOOOP!" start-up noise it makes (you'll understand what I mean if you've owned a Samsung drive), it's extremely quiet in operation. I can barely hear it seeking, even if I press my ear to it. Vibration is almost non-existant too. Despite being a "green" drive, it's fairly quick too - a quick benchmark gave a top speed of 126MB/sec and an average of 88MB/sec. Definitely good enough to almost saturate a gigabit ethernet connection
The motherboard - well, nothing to really write home about. It has an integrated GeForce 8200, so I suppose it'll decode HD video and run games at low settings without choking, but that's not particularly useful in a server. There's a decent array of overclocking settings in the BIOS, but again I'm not overclocking since this is supposed to be a rock-solid server. No other fancy gizmos on here - just a good ol' plain motherboard.
The PSU is the cheapest one Corsair makes, providing 400W of power. This is waay more than enough, and should power 6-8 drives without complaint (when I eventually add that many drives). Like all Corsairs, it's very well-built, efficient, and its big fan spins slowly to keep the noise down.
Overall, for around £200, I've built myself a quiet, efficient home server that costs less than some NAS devices, yet is in essence a full-blown computer with 2TB of storage space.
Software:
I'll be using Windows Home Server. Check back in June for the full review!
Pics:
Can't find the damn camera, Dad's probably "stored" it in a cupboard somewhere. Again, coming in June!
