Building a server

[B-B-Z-P]

How hard is it and how much would it cost on average, if i had a budget of like $700 to build and all the software.

Things I have:
Any old dell tower from a local school, very slow.. anything i can use out of it?
Also 2 GB of Ram, and a 250 GB HardDrive.


Thanks for the help.

 

[kmote]

What is the server for?

 

[B-B-Z-P]

Hosting a website, and some Bot's for wc3 and file hosting.

 

[kmote]

If you're wanting a public facing website, you should definitely use a hosting service. Obviously for an Intranet or website testing, a personal server is ideal.
I assume that wc3 means warcraft 3 which would probably mean a windows OS. File hosting is easy enough.

Could I get some clarification on wc3? What is it exactly? What requirements does it have (eg. specific OS, requires a monitor, etc)?

 

[B-B-Z-P]

Um, yes warcraft 3 And it would be a PvPGN and also Stealth bot and ghost One, and I goning to be hosting a bussines webpage off of it, Windows, and i have a dual mod set up so i can just hook it up to one of my monitors.

 

[orihS ‪‪‪Shiro]

Give us some more information about the Dell Tower and the RAM model numbers and speed numbers.
Is it SDRAM? DDR? DDR2? DDR3?
What brand is the HDD?
Is it IDE? Is it SATA?

For the most part, with a budget of $700 you could build from scratch and accomplish your goals easily.

 

[B-B-Z-P]

Thats all inside the computer.. Um, and i no longer have the RAM or HDD, so im gona try and find product info on this old Dell Tower:

1 6P791 Printed Wiring Assembly,PlanarGX60,845GL,A/V/N,Optiplex
1 8R160 Processor,80531,1.7G,256K, 400 Front Side Bus,Celeron
1 5120P Cord,Power,125V,6Feet,SJT, Unshielded
1 4N454 Keyboard,104 Key,US,NMB,LC,MG
1 5U607 Pad,Mouse,DAO,X-LOB
1 735HE Mouse,PS2,6P,2 Button,Wheel 1.3A,MS,MG
1 3K113 Dual Inline Memory Module,256,266M,32X64M8K,184
1 5N356 Dell 206, 120V Speakers, for Dell Inspiron and Dimension Systems, Customer Install
1 2P011 Compact Disk Drive,128K,I,F5 48X,LTN-486,01
1 4P121 Display,Cathode-Ray Tube,17, D,R772P,Midnight Gray,Dell Americas Organization
1 1T320 Hard Drive,20G,I,F3,1 inch 7.2K,WD-XL40S
1 7T281 Floppy Drive,1.44M,F3,3 Mode, No Bezel,TEAC,V4,01
1 1F756 Kit,Software,Overpack,Windows 2000 Professional,SP2,F5 English

 

[S0ULphIRE]

that will NOT, I repeat NOT, be good enough to use as the type of server you want

If you're dead set on hosting the server yourself I'd recommend spending some money and buying a whole new tower. You'll also need a good internet connection, and a router with port-forwarding capabilities.

 

[B-B-Z-P]

Yep Yep, well i would rather not buy one but build with the stuff i have, I still have That HDD so what would i need? Ram, New Mother board?

Im trying to learn to build and the components i would need.

And I got a 100 mps, connection with a netgear 108mps router.

 

[orihS ‪‪‪Shiro]

Yep Yep, well i would rather not buy one but build with the stuff i have, I still have That HDD so what would i need? Ram, New Mother board?

Im trying to learn to build and the components i would need.

And I got a 100 mps, connection with a netgear 108mps router.

You'll be much better off in the long run building this server from scratch instead of using outdated parts.
That tower is for a Pentium 4 build from like 10 years ago.
Please, for the love of god, don't use it now.

I suggest you get a cheap AM3 motherboard $50-60 an athlon ii x2 240 cpu $55-60 and a 500Gb HDD $50 and 2-4Gb DDR3 ram $40-100 and a cheap graphics card $60-100 PSU $30-50 Case $20-40

$305-480

That could handle everything you're talking about, I'm pretty sure.
If you want to go a little more high end than that...
You could get an Athlon II X4 620 (Quad Core) $100 instead of the Athlon II X2 240 (Dual Core)
Go 4Gb of RAM and get a 5770 (Graphics Card) ($170)
Taking the cost up to...
$590~600