Hello all, got a question for ya...
I have an old Dell E510 (Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD) that I was hoping to turn into a Home Server of sorts, perhaps as a Media Streaming PC or whatever. I have built numerous high-end gaming PC's for myself and friends, but I have NO IDEA at all about what a server requires...
I've been wanting to do this for some time, but recently my girlfriend's father (IT guy) was getting rid of some older PC stuff, and knowing that I had the intention of "reinvigorating" my old Dell, he gave me the following parts:
- Radeon X1600 PRO
- Radeon 7000 (idk much about this card)
- 1x Samsung 7200rpm 80GB HDD
- 1x Western Digital 7200rpm 20GB HDD
- 2x 1GB Sticks of OZC "GOLD" DDR2-667 (PC2-5400) RAM
- an entire 6-year-old laptop (haven't cracked it open yet)
- a few BNIB 80mm fans as well as a GIANT 250mm full-metal "Extremely high flow" fan
- countless cables/connectors (SATA/IDE/POWER/FAN/etc/etc/etc)
- A couple of wiring/cable management kits
(*I also have a ton of components from my old FX-51 gaming PC, but it's all Registered/ECC RAM, AMD stuff, and AGP; HDD's and Disc Drives, plus cables, are universal though...)
The PC now has 4x256MB RAM sticks in it (DDR2), so I figured pulling two and sticking the Dual Channel OCZ kit in for 2.5GB of RAM; a nice 150% increase.
I am hoping to install a secondary HDD to run in RAID1 (2x120GB); boost read speed significantly while the redundancy makes sense for some of the stuff that will be installed on there.
Eventually, I'd like to go to 2x1TB HDD's in a home server, but I may just get a 2TB USB3.0 external HDD and connect it through my router. Easier and even more redundancy.
As far as the video cards, I would think the x1600PRO would be the better choice, even though it's "aged", so is the computer, so it's not going to be bottle-necked by a P4 @ 3.0GHZ (I think).
This PC is located, currently, on the second floor, one room over from where the house's primary cable line is, and thus the Cable Modem and Router (upgrading to a new E4200 or equivalent 450/450 dual-band MIMO router, and using the current one as a repeater located on the first floor to allow for much better signal to reach the Home Theater in the basement; might do Powerline Ethernet as well).
I would like to be able to use the soon-to-be-reinvigorated PC to:
- Stream music (maybe movies?)
- Backup DATA (Master's Thesis and PhD Dissertation both so I NEED, NEED, NEED redundancy!)
- RUN RELIABLY
- Allow for the 5 other PC's in the house to connect to it easily:
- 1 laptop (Win7 Home Prem64, hardwired Ethernet, what I'm writing this on)
- 2 laptops (Win XP/7, both WiFi G/N, one used on 2nd floor one on 1st)
- 1 Gaming Desktop (my H2O/PhenomIIx6 1100T/CFX rig; Win7 Ult64; Hardwired Ethernet; nicest PC in the house but I don't want it to be a part of setting up this server)
- 1 "Work" Desktop (Dell XPS8300 SB-corei5/8GBram/etc; Win7Prem64; WiFi G/N, first floor)
Also, just to give a complete picture, the following will be connected to the network as well:
FIRST FLOOR
- LG 42" LCD Television (wired/WiFi)
- Time Warner HD Cable Box/DVR (wired-only, I believe)
BASEMENT
- XBox360 (hardwired ideal as it is an original-launch-model "PRO" as well as for Netflix streaming)
- PS3 (hardwired ideal for streaming)
- LG 55" 120hz LED-LCD Television (wireless adapter available from LG or on Amazon or can be wired)
- Denon Receiver (wired or via WiFi)
- TWC HD Cable Box/DVR (wired-only I believe)
So, as you can see, I have a need to upgrade to Gigabit ethernet, and while doing so I figure that a home server would help a lot in managing all of these devices.
I really do appreciate any and all help! I don't mind getting elbow-deep in some silicon, in fact I enjoy tinkering and building PC's, but like I said, a gaming PC's setup is seemingly worlds away from a server. I am venturing into unfamiliar territory!
Also, I am more than happy to provide ANY and ALL additional details that may be needed, simply let me know if I left something out
Thank you again!
Sincerely,
nleksan
I have an old Dell E510 (Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD) that I was hoping to turn into a Home Server of sorts, perhaps as a Media Streaming PC or whatever. I have built numerous high-end gaming PC's for myself and friends, but I have NO IDEA at all about what a server requires...
I've been wanting to do this for some time, but recently my girlfriend's father (IT guy) was getting rid of some older PC stuff, and knowing that I had the intention of "reinvigorating" my old Dell, he gave me the following parts:
- Radeon X1600 PRO
- Radeon 7000 (idk much about this card)
- 1x Samsung 7200rpm 80GB HDD
- 1x Western Digital 7200rpm 20GB HDD
- 2x 1GB Sticks of OZC "GOLD" DDR2-667 (PC2-5400) RAM
- an entire 6-year-old laptop (haven't cracked it open yet)
- a few BNIB 80mm fans as well as a GIANT 250mm full-metal "Extremely high flow" fan
- countless cables/connectors (SATA/IDE/POWER/FAN/etc/etc/etc)
- A couple of wiring/cable management kits
(*I also have a ton of components from my old FX-51 gaming PC, but it's all Registered/ECC RAM, AMD stuff, and AGP; HDD's and Disc Drives, plus cables, are universal though...)
The PC now has 4x256MB RAM sticks in it (DDR2), so I figured pulling two and sticking the Dual Channel OCZ kit in for 2.5GB of RAM; a nice 150% increase.
I am hoping to install a secondary HDD to run in RAID1 (2x120GB); boost read speed significantly while the redundancy makes sense for some of the stuff that will be installed on there.
Eventually, I'd like to go to 2x1TB HDD's in a home server, but I may just get a 2TB USB3.0 external HDD and connect it through my router. Easier and even more redundancy.
As far as the video cards, I would think the x1600PRO would be the better choice, even though it's "aged", so is the computer, so it's not going to be bottle-necked by a P4 @ 3.0GHZ (I think).
This PC is located, currently, on the second floor, one room over from where the house's primary cable line is, and thus the Cable Modem and Router (upgrading to a new E4200 or equivalent 450/450 dual-band MIMO router, and using the current one as a repeater located on the first floor to allow for much better signal to reach the Home Theater in the basement; might do Powerline Ethernet as well).
I would like to be able to use the soon-to-be-reinvigorated PC to:
- Stream music (maybe movies?)
- Backup DATA (Master's Thesis and PhD Dissertation both so I NEED, NEED, NEED redundancy!)
- RUN RELIABLY
- Allow for the 5 other PC's in the house to connect to it easily:
- 1 laptop (Win7 Home Prem64, hardwired Ethernet, what I'm writing this on)
- 2 laptops (Win XP/7, both WiFi G/N, one used on 2nd floor one on 1st)
- 1 Gaming Desktop (my H2O/PhenomIIx6 1100T/CFX rig; Win7 Ult64; Hardwired Ethernet; nicest PC in the house but I don't want it to be a part of setting up this server)
- 1 "Work" Desktop (Dell XPS8300 SB-corei5/8GBram/etc; Win7Prem64; WiFi G/N, first floor)
Also, just to give a complete picture, the following will be connected to the network as well:
FIRST FLOOR
- LG 42" LCD Television (wired/WiFi)
- Time Warner HD Cable Box/DVR (wired-only, I believe)
BASEMENT
- XBox360 (hardwired ideal as it is an original-launch-model "PRO" as well as for Netflix streaming)
- PS3 (hardwired ideal for streaming)
- LG 55" 120hz LED-LCD Television (wireless adapter available from LG or on Amazon or can be wired)
- Denon Receiver (wired or via WiFi)
- TWC HD Cable Box/DVR (wired-only I believe)
So, as you can see, I have a need to upgrade to Gigabit ethernet, and while doing so I figure that a home server would help a lot in managing all of these devices.
I really do appreciate any and all help! I don't mind getting elbow-deep in some silicon, in fact I enjoy tinkering and building PC's, but like I said, a gaming PC's setup is seemingly worlds away from a server. I am venturing into unfamiliar territory!
Also, I am more than happy to provide ANY and ALL additional details that may be needed, simply let me know if I left something out
Thank you again!
Sincerely,
nleksan