Inexpensive: I don’t want to spend more than $700.
Excellent performance: it’s going to be mostly just a web server, rather than a compute server, so the requirements are fairly low.
High-quality components: all name-brand.
Not expandable. The odds of being able to upgrade economically are probably very small, so I’m not willing to spend extra for expandability in the future.
Something I’d be proud to have built (no bolt cutters, duct tape, or homemade moving parts).
$692.06 in merchandise, $93.60 S/H/tax, $785.66 total
Benchmarks
(coming soon)
Colocation
(coming soon)
Stuff I learned while building this server
The Intel D815EEA2LU seems like a perfect board for a rackmount server, but it doesn’t fit in a 1U case. The audio riser is too high.
I bought the retail version of the Celeron because I wanted a fan with it, but the fan doesn’t fit in a 1U case. So that was a waste of a couple of dollars.
It turns out that the Celeron 1.2GHz has an “integrated heat spreader” that plays more nicely with this particular board’s built-in heat sink. Oh well.
I didn’t bother with a floppy drive. I will probably regret it.
Pricewatch is pretty cool, but it doesn’t list every company in the world, so it still pays to do a search or two on Google.
There are a couple of barebones 1U servers out there by well-known manufacturers, such as the Intel ISP1100 (here is one for sale) and the Supermicro 5010E, but they’re just plain more expensive than building it yourself. I looked at the 5010E at Fry’s Electronics and it didn’t give me an impression of being high quality – the stickers were put on crooked and it looked like it was all plastic.