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poptart-on-rye
January 3rd, 2009, 06:33
Hello, I am looking into building a cheap home server to play with and learn FreeBSD.

I don't have any old computers lying around, so I'm investigating cheap options. The MSI Wind barebones desktop has got me interested.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or thought as to whether this would or would not suffice. Or any other ideas would be great!

Thanks
Djn
January 3rd, 2009, 14:35
It should be more than fast enough - file and web servers don't need that much hardware.
As for driver support, the Wind laptops seem to work (http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/net/2008-09/msg00042.html), so if this is more or less the same hardware it should be fine.
Lowell
January 4th, 2009, 18:23
That should work fine, but won't quite pay for itself compared to an old, "free" system in power. Those processors tend to run a bit hot for this sort of application, which is why I prefer my VIA CPU, but this system is less than half the price. Run a fan if you find it running hot.
poptart-on-rye
January 4th, 2009, 21:33
Thanks, that's good to know info. I'll look into it a bit more. I was also thinking if I ever decided to stop using it as a server it'd have good carry over to a simple workstation.
iconobum
January 15th, 2009, 16:46
you could build a fledgling server/workstation around this opteron board, tyan is rock solid.

you could set up a barebones system for about ~330$ for 1 cpu, 2 gig ram, hobby ps w/ 8 pin adapter. you supply a cast away case, hard drive and optical drive and you've got yourself an infant monster.
somewhere down the line you can throw 400$ into it and get 2 quad core cpus and a heap of ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151070
cajunman4life
January 15th, 2009, 17:54
I got a Sun SunFire V60x on ebay for $200. 2 dual-core xeon's @ 2.8GHz, 3GB RAM, and 2 36GB SCSI hard drives. One of the drives was DOA but I didn't consider that a big deal as I planned on mirroring the drives. I ordered a replacement drive for ~$50 somewhere else, and everything works beautifully.

So in short, I'd recommend checking ebay.