Anyone ever built a server? (rack)

[Barry]

Our community has decided to build our own server and colocate it after years of renting dedicated servers

I'm after the best possible setup possible for the money

Needs:
1U based
under 0.5 amps (important)


We have about £400 to do the build.

Anyone have any ideas?

[aidanjt]

115W and £400 isn't much to go on. What do you need the server to do?

[Barry]

It's for hosting game servers

[DDY]

This is what I can come up with for £400,

1U Rack case - £95
1U 180W PSU - £30
780G/8200 MATX/ITX Motherboard - £80(max)
AMD Athlon X2 5050e - £60
4GB PC5400 - £40
1TB HDD - £75
1U AM2 heatsink - £20

[aidanjt]

This is what I can come up with for £400,

1U Rack case - £95
1U 180W PSU - £30
780G/8200 MATX/ITX Motherboard - £80(max)
AMD Athlon X2 5050e - £60
4GB PC5400 - £40
1TB HDD - £75
1U AM2 heatsink - £20

++

Yeah, something like that will do it for a game server. Wouldn't need a 1TB HDD thought, probably better off with 2x500GB drives in RAID1, or something to that effect.

[GoNz0]

what are you being charged per month to locate it ?

whats your bandwidth per month?

what servers are you expecting to run and player slots per server ?

linix or windows as the post above never quoted for that.

[Zsev]

wow interesting. I've always wondered the sort of hardware they put in servers. My guess is for a gaming server you'll want a quad core and lots of RAM, 8GB perhaps ?

Back then I've setup 4 slot (yes i know its small) CS servers with a VPS with 384 megs of ram and it was already choking.

[GoNz0]

i work for a GSP, anything from a dual CPU opteron with 2gb ram to a dual xeon (8 cores) and 8gb ram really.

we still rent some P4 with 1gb ram for about £50 a month, they can handle 4 servers so long as they are not to modern

you need the bandwidth though or there useless.

an AMD x2 isnt worth it tbh, to damn hot and not enough balls.

[aidanjt]

wow interesting. I've always wondered the sort of hardware they put in servers. My guess is for a gaming server you'll want a quad core and lots of RAM, 8GB perhaps ?

Back then I've setup 4 slot (yes i know its small) CS servers with a VPS with 384 megs of ram and it was already choking.

Naw, the above would be able to handle hundreds of players, even with modern game servers. Dedicated boxes don't have to deal with the same overhead as a VPS, for a start.

[aidanjt]

an AMD x2 isnt worth it tbh, to damn hot and not enough balls.

45W is too hot?

Honestly, an old Athlon64 could easily handle a few game servers. The 5050e has plenty of grunt.

[jamin]

If you are looking at a colo site for you server.... try telecity or telehouse.

Both huge london based hosting centres.

[GoNz0]

Naw, the above would be able to handle hundreds of players, even with modern game servers. Dedicated boxes don't have to deal with the same overhead as a VPS, for a start.

i know for a fact it wouldnt handle hundreds as we got rid of ours, the opterons in dual cpu single core run rings round an x2

45W is too hot?

Honestly, an old Athlon64 could easily handle a few game servers. The 5050e has plenty of grunt.

of course it depends on the game servers your running, crysis warhead, bf2 and 2142 and a cod4/5 and you will get lag if you top 150 players as it cant cope with the memory bandwidth.

this is all from experience as its what i do at night.

CSS on the other hand and you can slap 10 servers on a single core.

a lot of GSP's will tell you that it can run a lot, but they base this on the fact all the servers will never be full