New home office server

[spadgham]

Hi there,

I want to build a new home office server running for my business. We want to run MS SBS 2003 on a setup that use RAID 5, dual NIC, 3 x 250 GB HDD and about 4 GB RAM. However, I am not sure what to do about a motherboard. I don't know whether to opt for a specific server motherboard or a normal desktop one. Any advice would be much appreciated. I've budgeted about $1500 for the server. Many thanks.

Simon

 

[GhislainG]

For $1500, you could probably buy a real server. If you want to build your own, then the following desktop motherboards are fine (a video card is required) and they include at least 6 SATA ports:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
Asus P5Q-E (second LAN not as fast as the primary one)

Or you could buy a more expensive server motherboard (no video card required) that includes 4 SATA ports:

SUPERMICRO MBD-PDSME+-O
Asus P5BV-E
Intel S3210SHLX

All motherboards above include Intel Matrix RAID which is good, but not as good as a hardware RAID controller.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I'd agree with GhsilainG. Just go with a standard motherboard. I recently finished my Server 2008 w/ Hyper-V build using a Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L motherboard. Runs like a champ!

-Wolf sends

 

[GhislainG]

I use a GA-EP45-UD3P for the same setup and 8 GB of memory.