What hardware is most important for a good server? Fast hard drive, lots of RAM? Are there motherboards that work better for server-type usage?
I'm planning to host LAN games on it, store movies/music, and possibly use it a media center hooked up to our projector as well.
You should be concentrating your budget on CPU, RAM, and storage. If you wanna use it as a media center (although I would normally suggest two separate machines, one server feeding a media center), just stick something capable of churning out 1080p in it (the new Sandy i5 / i7's can do this on-board if you get a motherboard with graphics out, look for HDMI-out for easy peasy cabling).
Fast HDD's aren't too much of an issue if you're willing to buy 5 normal drives and stick them in RAID5 for 4tb of storage with redundancy - HDD's are currently expensive as fuck so you might be tempted to buy one, wait until they come down, and then splurge on them (remembering that you'll have to wipe them all to make a new RAID5 array).
The motherboard isn't really an issue except for the two things I highlighted above, you'll want HDMI-OUT if you're going Sandy Bridge on-board and you'll want one capable of on-board RAID if you want to go that route. I can't really give you a build list as I'm kinda ill and don't know my way around newegg at all, but hopefully I've given you some pointers.
[QUOTE=Larikang;34614699]What hardware is most important for a good server? Fast hard drive, lots of RAM? Are there motherboards that work better for server-type usage?
I'm planning to host LAN games on it, store movies/music, and possibly use it a media center hooked up to our projector as well.[/QUOTE]
Is space / heat a concern?
I'd get a Micro-ATX or ITX mobo, fill it with 2x4GB of ram, i7 2600, or E3-1230, but then you'd need a C200 series server board for it.
Grab yourself 1TB WD blues or blacks, then run raid-1 or raid-5, or even raid-10 if data integrity is important, and you can afford 4 of the same drives.
It goes like this at least in my case, for my data server. Storage > RAM > CPU > Network. ( 1gbe is standard nowadays )
For a game server it will go. CPU > Ram > Network > Storage.
For a minecraft server it will go. Fast storage > RAM > CPU > network.
Forgot to add, if it's just for inhome use, remember to get a decent PSU. 80+ Silver with good ripple supression and good voltage regulation. What comes to mind is a seasonic 80+ platinum PSU.
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