server processors

Someone want to help me out with this one? I searched around for a while but couldn't find any guidelines that would help me out specifically.

What I'm trying to do is set up a personal file server box that would sit in the corner of my room and basically be a file storage system that would serve myself and whoever's around locally.

Gonna connect them all via Gigabit Ethernet or wireless Ethernet depending on how much spare cash I might have at the time of buying the parts for my system. The one compoment I'm not sure about though is the processor.

I know that I'm probably going to get biased answers towards AMD's since I put this up in the AMD forum (not a bad thing though. ) but this gets more posts so I figured more people will view this, albeit you all being AMD people.

But I just want to know what processor I should get for a system of this purpose. No, this doesn't have to get 50,000+ FPS in Unreal 2, get insane folding points or anything like that. It just has to give me enough MHz to send me files.

I remember hearing somewhere that the rule for server procs should be 50 MHz per person it has to serve, but that could be a figure totally out of the window as I heard that a longass time ago and it was probably incorrect to start off with.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Anything remotley capable will do a perfect job. Personally I'd go for the cheapest Duron they have for sale. Unless your running a large database server of sorts, the processing power you will actually require is minimal for file serving. I'd go for something like the 1.1ghz Duron (bout £17-£18) with about 128M RAM running win XP proff or win 2k server. The advantage of using an AMD proc, apart from price on the durons, is the advantages, although more slight than it used to be, on folding speed

Hehe, good luck whatever you choose.

just get a cheap XP1700+ DLT3C

you don't have to get anything expensive for just a fileserver.. a duron will do fine.. (or if you want an intel, since it seems you haven't decided yet) a celeron would do as well..

If you are running a file server, you only need a 1ghz processor (or there abouts) to get a decent performance. Technically, if you arent doing any DC projects, and the machine really is just sitting there waitin for file requests, anything like an XP is going to be truly wasted. What you need is ram, more the better.

Heres my server. Keep in mind that it runs SETI and webserving software, mailserver, holds my net connection, and does everything that I don't want my main comp to do, ie. something I don't want to get

XP2000
512MB DDR
ECS K7S5A mobo
TNT2 vid card

then, your drives, thats it.

You could easily get away with a p200 for fileserving, as long as you had NT4... But really, go with whatever maker you want, just aim for around 1ghz, tons of ram, loads of drives. Everything else can be cheap and cheerful.

TO be honest... I don't see the need for tons of RAM if it is just a file server? If he was running loads of other servers (HTTP, Mail, FTP, DB etc) then I could see the need. But simply for file/inet sharing he would only need enough RAM for the OS to run effieciently as no other software is required?

Just my $0.02

For a file server save some money on the cpu and put it into a good nic and hard drive - preferably scsi for file serving.

I think you guys are missing the point and hitting overkill for the required usage here... it is only a smal scale server for a small number of users. The need for SCSI hard disks etc isn't really suited here. I'd save as much money as possible to put into another rig, go with the minimum spec required, as a ms here and there on the seek times ain't going to make much of a difference to a small file server. Not like it will be getting hundreds or thousands of requests per minute, let alone per second...

Machines these days are way overpowered for MOST of what
they are used for! I mean, come on, how much power do we
need to Browse the Web, Burn CDs, and Listen to MP3s? Only
gamers and audio/visual hobbiest really push the systems hard
enough.

IMHO.

Get a stable, name brand system board with as many features
as you need (IE Onboard Sounds, Onboard Video, onboard
NIC, or even two NICs!), and then get an AMD 1700+

As for hard drives, I find that even with 8 friends over here
gaming and leaching, a single processor AMD and one, or maybe
two 80GB 8MB cache HDs are more then sufficient for the
beating we give it. Dual NICs do help at that point.

All in all, the difference between servers and desktops is
stability. And that shouldn't even be an issue at all considering
how well built the high end or even mid-line system boards
are!

Recommendation:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (dual NICs, onboard sound, SATA all the
stuff you could use and future ready)
AMD 1700+
WD 80GB (or 120GB) Special Edition 8MB Cache
Kingston PC-2700 Hyper-X

I've built three of these for friends, and a souped up one
for myself. I LOVE them. ROCK solid overclocked, or stock!

If you're hard up for the Intel side, just get an ABIT BH-7,
which is a rock solid no-nonsense system board, and a 1.8A P4
and the Hyper-X memory with the same HD.

I built a system with just those specs for myself for my recording
studio...Except I put an add-on RAID card and two 80WD SE.
Again, ROCK solid, and with the lower end processor, you can
use a midline Heatsink and find and keep it quiet!!

Two things.

One is wouldn't we need to up the CPU MHz if using audio editing apps (I've thought about the need to edit audio and I'm keeping this in mind).

Also, what kind of setup could I do with dual NIC's? This hasn't crossed my mind yet but could prove to be useful.

{looks at dx2-66 -16Mb router in corner, shrugs}

A duron is probably plenty. You really only need something as good as a duron for the gigabit internet (needing a faster drive) for most people with 100Mbit anything around 500Mhz would be fine, for 10 Mbit, around 200Mhz. But that might be just me, I was still running 486es as internet browsers just over a year ago.

Road Warrior

I'd recommend a plain old Athlon - they can be had for $ 25 or less and they are just fine as everyday machines, let alone servers. Get a stable chipset board and you'll be happy.

/me runs a celeron 500mhz w/ 192mb pc100 and a 10gb hdd w/ xp pro and it runs fine


(web, file, print, and Descent 3 server)

As Mark said, get a cheap Athlon...sometimes there is overkill...

yeah get an XP1700+ DLT3C it's cheap enough and it's an instant upgrade ( 1ghz overclock !!!!) =)