"Arifi Koseoglu" wrote in message
...
Hello everyone,

I am planning to "build" a "Server" for my small office use and need some
advice. One thing I know is that the Mobo will be Asus (no different brand
since the SP3G).

The outline of the configuration in my mind is like:

Single CPU in a dual-ready system.
1G DDR (possibly will end up with 2G)
Serial ATA in mirroring RAID config. (only reason for NOT SCSI: Too
expensive)
Intel (or AMD ??) cpu

Which ASUS MOBO? Which ASUS/Other components ?

The server will be running MSSQL server on WIndows 2000 or 2003 Server,
and
storing + indexing user documents. ( 10 users)

Many thanks in advance,
-arifi
For Intel, only the Xeon's support SMP. Hence if you consider 'dual ready'
to be important, it rules out the P4 boards. Do some 'research'. Set up an
existing 'workstation' machine to do at least part of the same job, and run
PerfMon. Set it to record processor, memory, and disk activity. I would not
be at all suprised, if you find that the CPU useage is low, but rises
significantly when running indexing tasks. Typically, disk activity will be
the 'killer' (consider using a seperate drive to store the indexes, and the
OS itself. A failure here will not lose data, and the performance gain can
be massive. Serial ATA, gains basically _nothing_, unless used with drives
that intrinsically have better hardware performance than their normal IDE
versions. The only drives that do this at the moment, are the WD Raptor
models. Also look carefully at memory useage.
Beware that many IDE drives, now have only one year warranties. This
reflects how cheaply they are built (the Raptors are more comparable with
base end SCSI drives, and have five year warranties).
The AMD Opteron's, perform excellently, and run cool. If you think you
application might expand in the future, consider these.

Best Wishes