Hello all, I’d be really grateful for your advice on how to move my family PC setup forwards… am sorry for the long post but I wanted to explain the current setup and also to explain what I'm after, and finally my thinking so you could shoot me down and (hopefully) suggest something better? I’d be really grateful for any feedback.
The current situation:
I’ve got a couple of tower pc’s that are used daily for home use. One of them has an old Athlon XP processor with a radeon 9600 gpu, a gig of ram and a hideous case. It’s ancient, about to die, slow and really noisy too. Oh and it holds all the outlook data files for the family. The other one is an X2 4800 with a couple of gig of ram, and a 7800 GTX graphics card, a lot quieter, looks okay and runs games and apps like photoshop nicely. Holds all the music and photo media for the family. We also now have a laptop (rock x770). Desktops are hardwired, laptop wireless, all routed through a linksys54gs router.
The time has come to replace the old athlon box, but I’d like to re-think the whole setup, with your help?!
Requirements:
(a) I would like a server of some kind. As you might expect, currently got duplicated user files across all the pcs. Solved the outlook/email problem by creating a share and sharing the outlook data files across the network. But really, I would like a central server that is always on, doesn’t use huge amounts of power, is quiet and can perform the following duties:
1. Store everyone’s files
2. Hold the media – i.e. photographs and music
3. Run the slimserver media streaming software
4. Centralise email / outlook
5. Centralise backups of all the client devices
6. Provide remote access facilities so family can get at files when at work/school
7. Do stuff like hosting any test databases, sharepoint etc
8. Maybe centralise virus checking, parental control etc
(b) I need to upgrade/replace the oldest pc in order to:
1. Run more modern games
2. Avert disaster it’s about to die
(c) Want noise to not increase from current levels!
Constraints:
(a) The biggest constraint is space. All of the current equipment is housed in our dining room, where the built-in furniture allows for 2 tower pc solutions. Given I want 2 clients AND a server, am seriously looking at SFF i.e. shuttle type solutions. I could stack a couple of shuttles together and store in the place of a single tower…
(b) Budget – not sure yet, need to understand my options better. Would like to re-use components where practical but not if it compromises the requirements. £2K would be a hard sell to the missus
My proposed solution:
Keep the most recent pc (X2 4800), remove the GPU, put in a raid array of new HDDs and use this to run small business server which will help with centralising user storage, email, security, backups and also remote access.
Buy 2 new pcs, shuttle solutions like the XPC SD37P2. Stick either E6600s (or Q6600?) in each, along with 2GB (or 4GB?) of RAM.
Steal the 7800GTX 256MB graphics card from the server, and use this in one shuttle, and get a 7900GTX 512MB for the other. Put striped raptors in both to speed up windows (XP pro) a bit.
Whilst this will give me 2 up to date PCs, I’m estimating that will cost me circa £900 per shuttle, plus server storage and I’ll probably need to upgrade the router to get the benefit of a gigabit LAN. So as this stands I can see this costing over £2K…
So, if you’re still awake, any better ideas?
All the best
sp