File server for a church for under $600

The file server at church took a dive. A capacitor bulged, one hdd is smoking, the other wont let the test system boot to windows and neither spin, a case fan seized, and the case has 2 year old cola (sugar based glue?) that dumbfounded me and the guy behind the counter at PCClub when opening the case.

So a new computer.

The pc club guy said $595 for their prebuilt with an extra gig of ram and a second 320 gb for raid. Their system is a asus p5k-vm... I think. With an E4500, ddr2-667 kingston valueram, and a generic psu. Software not included because the server 2003 license is still good. That is my target to beat. Just for an equivalent or better price this is what I came up with.


CM 690 Case $59.99-$40 = $19.99
OCZ Platinum XTC DDR2-800 2gb (2x1gb) $62.99-$35=$27.99
Corsair VX550 $88.90
Biostar TA770 Motherboard $79.99
AMD Athlon 64x2 4200+ $64.00
Tuniq 120 $44.99
WD 320gb SE16 aaks 7200rpm sata3.0 $74.99
WD 320gb SE16 aaks 7200rpm sata3.0 $74.99

$550.84
+$37.75 Shipping
$589.59
-$75 (rebates)

=$514.59

Add a couple yate loons for the tuniq and the case to get a ballpark of $600 out of pocket.

Is there anything I should change or should I suggest they shop around and buy a prebuilt with a warranty (previous one died at over 3 years, after any waranty would have expired) and possibly go with the pc club special?

Remember this is for a church with the on call geek possibly moving out of state in the next few months so long term reliability is the first priority. They might be willing to go higher since the old server was $1300 three years ago.

The church does not need afther market cooling, PSU is okay...


You don't need RD770, but the price is reasonable...


seems okay...


(and stock cooler is reliable, theyre made to be reliable.)

sucks to prebuilt.

that looks like a solid system. you could maybe find ram that runs at lower volts than the ocz's. they're 2.1. try for 1.8. that would increase its life. you could probably downgrade to the 450vx if you can find it cheaper.

You could also use an Earthwatt's 380 which is on sale now (including free shipping).

Looks good. FYI the AMD stock cooler is VERRY good even when over clocking. Also I'm kind of curious why I church has a file server

If the amd cooler is fine then I'll stick with that and save $50.

I started looking for 1.8v ddr2-800s and I'm lost on the brands. I know corsair has their warranty, but other than that it is just a whole lot of the same. I could ask which brand to start with but that is like asking Coke or Pepsi.

As for why a file server. The office has 7 computers. Three full time pastors, one temp pastor, a worship leader, an office manager, and a projection computer. A central storage computer is needed to keep track of where that sermon or bulletin draft was saved to.

I'm not sure what to do about backup storage though. Can you hotswap and clone an external SATA drive as the second (third during cloning) drive in a RAID1 array? So have one permanent internal drive and have two externals you swap out on a weekly basis and still have them be redundant, not just a weekly clone.