Notebooks and Mini ITX Machines as Home Servers?

An anonymous reader asks: "I recently moved into a townhouse (the first time on my own, actually) and need to get a server up and running before the other trivial stuff (furniture, getting food in the fridge, *getting* a fridge, etc, etc). I need the basic set of services - HTTP, FTP, DNS, SMTP/POP3 for any self respecting geek. The drawback is that I'm on a limited budget (money and space wise) and need a server that is *extremely* energy efficient, takes up little space, makes no noise, and generates very little heat. A basic P4 notebook seems to fit the bill - small, low power consumption, built in screen/keyboard/mouse (no need for KVM), wireless so I can stick it on the top shelf of my closet, and generates less heat and noise than your average desktop. Is there any reason to consider, say, a mini ITX rig (such as a shuttle) over this? Any drawbacks?"

Cost

[TwoStep]

A mini-itx setup should be signifigantly cheaper than a P4 laptop. It also is somewhat upgradable, though that depends on the exact MB you get. I would look into the VIA Epia/Edens, as they are extremely enegery efficent and produce very little heat.

Twostep

Re:Cost

[terpia]

Exactly. Also, the use of VNC [realvnc.com] negates the need for a KVM if you plan on using a GUI for administration of the machine. If you don't need a GUI to administer the machine, just setup SSH and connect to it over the network.

There's nothing economical about a P4 laptop.

Notebook? Cheap?

[lukew]

If you're looking for cost effective I'd say a notebook is definately out.

Go the MiniITX. Make yourself a cool case, submit to some places, feel better about yourself and meet new and exciting people.

Re:Notebook? Cheap?

[crow]

Consider a used notebook. While the built-in screen is a nice convenience, you could possibly find one really cheap with a broken screen.

Re:Notebook? Cheap?

[Dammital]

Agreed. I bought a used Compaq Armada with a cracked case and a battery that was NFG. Plugged it into an UPS, slapped OpenBSD on it and configured PF. Makes a dandy firewall and PPPoE box for my DSL connection, is low-power and silent.

Another poster warned about HD reliability, though. We'll see what happens.

Re:Notebook? Cheap?

[hatrisc]

However, my pentium 3 notebook runs extremely hot after about 4 hours. cooling in notebooks wasn't very good at the time of pentium 3's (at least that's what i seem to think), and a decently priced used notebook will get you a pentium 3. and since the cpu will be working alot, i'd say a mini-itx system will do much better.

Re:Notebook? Cheap?

[xombo]

I was about to recommend a PIII, then I noticed I have a PIII sony vaio with no LCD working but you can plug a monitor into the back, it would be perfect for running all the things you mentioned, MSN me: preston [at] moderngeek [dot] com or AIM: Preston578, email server is down though, so don't even try that :P

Low Performance

[man_ls]

A Mini-ITX rig, with an integrated Via C3 processor, will probably perform about as well as an Intel Celeron, a little bit weaker in the floating-point realm.

These machines are designed to be low-power, high-efficiency machines, where the emphasis is a quiet, cool system, rather than a high-performance one. For instance -- home theatre, mobile audio/video (car, truck) or light terminals in high-traffic areas. Many of them have hardware assisted MPEG decoding, to allow them to play DVDs and such in a home-theatre setting without heating up or glitching due to the limitations of the CPU.

If you wanted to run one of these as a TCP service provider (http, ftp, etc.) you're probably fine. But I wouldn't use this for anything "heavy" including, a high-volume e-mail server, Active Directory or DNS server, etc. The CPU just doesn't have enough power to push these services with sufficient performance.

Cliffnotes:
Mini-ITX: Good for light useage. Applications: Personal HTTPd/FTPd, personal e-mail server, home router, file server.

Bad applications: Active Directory / PDC, DNS, etc.

Re: what?!?

[Splork]

Sparc 5s were our DNS servers for a site with 500 machines and a 100mbit/sec internet connection. A Sparc 10 was our mail server for the same location (a previous job).

what do you mean a mini-itx system doesn't have enough cpu power to handle dns and mail. get real. stop running exchange.

Re: what?!?

[man_ls]

A Sun Sparc has a much better processor than a VIA EPIA board does...

Re: what?!?

[shaka999]

You might want to classify that just a bit.

A 200Mhz sparc II is not a better processor than a VIA. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re: what?!?

[BJH]

Oh bollocks.
Sparc 5s and Sparc 10s ran on CPUs that would be considered underpowered in a PDA these days.
Sure, they got good throughput compared with PCs of the time thanks to their more sensible bus, but they don't stand a hope in Hell of keeping up with any modern CPU (and that includes C3s).

Sparc 5...

[Andy Dodd]

Not UltraSparc.

Read: OLD. On the order of a 486 or maybe a classic Pentium in power.

Re:Low Performance

[BJH]

I can tell that you came into servers late...

ISPs used to regularly run high-volume email/DNS servers on machines ten times slower than that ITX box. It should be able to handle anything an individual might want to do.

Re:Low Performance

[ecloud]

Yep, you really don't need much for a home server. Back in 94 or so my home gateway (PPP, web server, email, some packet radio stuff, etc.) was a 386/33 with 5 megs of RAM and 70 megs or so of disk. Of course Linux distros were much smaller back then. (I used Slackware) I could even compile a kernel on that machine (in several hours). But no trouble at all keeping up with any load I needed it for. I've always stored all my email on my home gateway and read it there (I went from elm to cyrus to pine to

Re:Low Performance

[Clover_Kicker]

>But I wouldn't use this for anything "heavy" including, a
>high-volume e-mail server, Active Directory or DNS server, etc.

Heh.

I guess Active Directory really is a pig, I ran NDS trees with several thousand accounts on 486 servers. And since when is DNS CPU-bound?

Re:Low Performance

[LWATCDR]

Is this going to be a server or a workstations?
If you want to be very brave you might want to look at some of the old Power Macs. They are small, don't make a lot of noise, and can run Linuz. I have seen 7500 for under $20 They can use IDE so you can put a bigger drive on them. Gentoo makes one for the Power PC so rock on. Me I just picked up an AMD K6 for $20 that I will stick in a closet for my server. As for a router. You can pick them up for under $100.

Laptops work, but be careful

[crow]

I did this with an old P120 laptop, and I had over 500 days of uptime (well, it rolled over at 497).

Some cautions to consider: laptops aren't designed as servers. I've heard stories of hard drives not surviving continuous use. Newer systems with fans still generate noise and heat--be sure it's ventilated.

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I actualy built my firewall on a WinChip C6 board. Cheap at auction/sacrifice.

My point is about the HD. I use a 10GB 2.5in notebook harddrive in here, for noise and heat considerations. My Exim SMTP proxy and Squid run GREAT, no real issue aboutthe form-factor. This has served me for 2-plus years. I tar the whole thing up nightly - via SSH - onto my big workstation. Even if the drive blows, I pop another cheapie in the box, boot with Knoppix, and restore!

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[haystd]

I've seen problems as well. Things like crashes that seemed to be related to heat (fans worked and could be heard cycling on and off continuously during kernel builds). Also, older notebooks can have a flaky APM bios that will cause fits. Also, there seems to be a much higher variance in the quality of hardware and drivers for things like the NIC and modem with some not working under heavy load, some drivers not liking some implementations of common hardware (Tulip to name one). Finally, notebook hardware a

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[LordNimon]

If you disable all logging, a properly configured laptop with enough memory should almost never go to disk. The laptop will then power down the hard drive. Some exceptions would be if you had a POP3 and/or SMTP server.

Hmmm... that would be a useful FAQ: How to configure a Linux server to minimize/eliminate disk I/0.

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[ferringb]

Alternatively, just use a different syslogger- say metalog for instance, which writes in blocks rather then 'each and every.'

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[Cyn]

or... you could just push logs / etc. to another machine - tho that requires you have another machine up 'all the time', but let's face it - we all do. Naturally you could set it up with a ramdisk for logging too, if you had enough ram, and write them every once in a while - wouldn't be useful for figuring out a sudden glitch, but sudden glitches don't always log enough anyway, if they're serious.

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[jovlinger]

I'll respond, since there still isn't an "incorrect" moderation option.

Linux is actually REALLY bad about avoiding disk io. Perhaps if you ran from a ramdisk root and unmounted the disk. There was also talk about running IP filters with a halted kernel, which would seem to as IO-less as you could expect to get. however, in these cases, you really don't need a disk at all, as you could net-boot the computer.

There are a couple of patches out there for 2.4.20, (google for morton+laptop mode) and there's a

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[Undertaker43017]

I used an old Tecra 500 laptop as my original FW, it worked well for about almost two years. The biggest problem with laptops is heat. As the original poster mentioned, laptops are not meant for continous use. I fried four PCMCIA network cards, and finally the MB died.

Via Eden Processor on mini-itx

[gregRowe]

The Via Eden processor is *designed* to use little power. It doesn't even need a fan. You can buy mini-itx boards with an eden processor.

Does a home computer really use that much power???

[SoCalChris]

I have a P4 2Ghz, with 17" monitor, laser printer, router, Cisco ATA and scanner that is up and running 24/7, and out monthly power bill is around $20. That is here in Southern California, where our electricity bills are ridiculously high too. That $20 power bill also takes into account that we use a lot of lights, and usually have the tv going.

This leads me to ask, why spend a bunch of money on a notebook or shuttle case to use as a server? If you're on a tight budget, won't one of those cost you a lot more than a regular PC would use in power?

Re:Does a home computer really use that much power

[Spleenl3oy]

I dont know what your talking about, my monthly electricity bill is around $160. I guess that could be due to the 10 computers running 24/7 but they couldnt take that much power could they :)

Re:Does a home computer really use that much power

[MerlynEmrys67]

Power expensive in California ???

It is more expensive than it used to be, but it is hardly expensive... It is now just costing california citizens what it costs to produce and ship the electricity that they use.

That said, thank the Government for buying power at the high point of the market and locking in those rates for 20 years, rather than let the free economy work and utilities lock rates when they are favorable

Three fans in the mini ITX

[Marillion]

I got a mini ITX shuttle unit that I use as a playback-only (so far) home build PVR. It has a built-in NTSC output which is very nice.

My biggest disappointment is the noise level. There are three fans in the thing: CPU, PS, and Case.

I can't really speak to power since I power on/off the unit as I need it.

Shuttle

[natbudin]

Actually, Shuttle doesn't produce a mini-ITX machine. The do produce a line of so-called XPCs, with a custom form factor. Some of these can use C3 processors, just like some mini-ITX mainboards.

If you're disappointed with the noise level, I'd recommend checking out the SS51G1, SB52G2, SS51G, or SB61G2, all of which have heat pipes, which are capable of cooling the CPU much more quietly than fans.

Doing this

[cgenman]

Stay away from the shuttles, they're pricey. You can pick up a compatible P3 LAN motherboard, a cheap PSU, some PC133 RAM, and an 800 mhz Socket 370 C3 for around 100 dollars. Put it in a box with a pre-existing HDD and a fan, and you have a server for 1/8th the cost of a new Laptop.

After setting it up, you won't interact with it via the screen / keyboard anyway, so don't bother.

And if your C3 costs are getting too high, pick up a $200 lindows box at walmart.com. Just remember to upgrade the fans to Panaflos, as the walmart box is tremendously, tremendously loud.

BTW, for more silencing tips, visit SilentPCReview.com. That's Silent PC Review dot C-O-M. [silentpcreview.com]

Re:Doing this

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay away from the shuttles, they're pricey.

There are other reasons...

I bought 10 of them for a "we need a working demo tomorrow" compute farm (I already had a bunch of 1.26GHz Tualatin P3's from old system pulls). They are quite lovely to look at. However, I have had no end of trouble with them and would recommend you stay away (at least from my SV-25 systems). YMMV, maybe I got a bad sample.

PSU:
Adequate for an 80GB 7200RPM drive and CD-RW. The fan in the PSU, however, is all but guaranteed to die jus

Re:Doing this

[BJH]

Hah! I suspected as much.

I had a Shuttle that blew its PSU after two days of 100% CPU usage, one month before the warranty ran out.

Unfortunately, being the inquisitive git I am, I cracked it open to see what failed (looked like a transformer basically melted from the heat), which broke the seal on it. Short story is they refused to replace it for free - I paid about $US25 for a new one.

They're not really made for heavy use, although they are good as a second home box for the kids.

Re:Doing this

[Bourbon Man]

I had 5 of the little Shuttle systems. 1 is still working, the rest are basically junk now. When these systems were functional, they were just plain loud. Given your list of requirements, I would *not* recommend the Shuttles. I was very dissapointed with them.

laptops rule

[peteshaw]

I remember when a previous employer had four servers set up in a mini-rack. It was a very efficient use of space. As far as a laptop goes.

Options:
Get an old pentium and make do, for 350.
Best Buy has HP 1.8ghz celeron lappy's for 699 and up
If you do need the power of a P4, then you will probably have to pay for it.

Pros of the laptop:
Built in UPS
Very low power consumption

Cons:
compatibility may be an issue if you run linux
longevity not as good as server
bang per dollar

OTOH, you mention the mini-itx cases. Why? Because they are cool? I don't think they use any less power than a full size. Is there a space constraint?

with the mini itx
Pros
Cheaper
sort-of expandable
cheaper replacement parts
looks cool -- chicks dig it

Cons
more power usage

I guess my big question is what are you gonna do with it? "The usual geek stuff" can be handled with a P-300 last I checked-- just buy an old laptop. But also, is power that expensive? You are *buying* a house, the ten bucks a month in electric surely won't bust ya. I don't get it.

Re:laptops rule

[mnmn]

<i> Is there a space constraint?</i>

Well it just doesnt feel right to have a complete half-tower case buzzing in a corner just to run a firewall and an apache. Gotta be minimalistic and smooth. On one hand, its nice to have a small quite laptop or old IBM Pentium1 system with no processor fan in a corner, and on the other, to be an extremist and get an old and obnoxious AS/400 system and try to run the webserver off it. Yet other geeks try things like running it off dreamcast or a beowulf of Linux PDAs. A simple computer just doesnt help that sense of self-respect. What if there are geeks in the new neighborhood?

I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.

Re:laptops rule

[jerkyjunkmail]

One of the companies my employer aquired over the last few years had an ERP system running on a s/360. The data was merged into our system and it sat dormant for a long time until was moved out of the server room and tossed in the garbage. The relic for free for the taking but nobody wanted the dinosaur.

Re:laptops rule

[mnmn]

Are you serious?? must be kidding. Noone throws out an S/360 no matter how big and old. At least you could auction it on ebay and ask the buyer to pick it up themselves.

Where is this city again?

Re:laptops rule

[Gleef]

mnmn wrote:

I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.

Well, apparently there's an S/390 on eBay right now [ebay.com] if you are interested. Don't know if it's complete, since I haven't played with S/390 hardware at all, but if I remember correctly, the drives would be in the next rack over, so you might have some more shopping to do.

Re:laptops rule

[mnmn]

Wow thanks. There is a chance it will land with me. If it does, expect pictures of me playing doom on it REAL FAST.

I am also thinking of wiring something like it up for public shell accounts, but I have to see its capabilities.

Re:laptops rule

[cgenman]

Actually, the ITX machines do use much less electricity. Mini-ITX.com has a 55w passively cooled sealed PSU that will power most setups.

And if you have the inclination and about 425 pounds to spare, you can get a totally fanless Via setup [mini-itx.com] with a silent Seagate Barracuda (the 5400 RPM Seagate IV is legendary). That's as silent as you can get without resorting to Compact Flash.

Pros:
Dead silent
Cheap replacement parts
High coolness factor
Sort-of expandable
Low power consumption

Cons:
Bang per dollar

Re:laptops rule

[jjshoe]

I don't think they use any less power than a full size.

Then you state

Cons
more power usage

if you hit Here [mini-itx.com] you will notice that the MAXIMUM power consumption of a power supply is 100 watts.. and that definatly is a LOT less then what i have in my desktop which should also calculate to some decent savings over time.

smaller, cheaper, better

[MSG]

You can get a number of units that will be smaller, cheaper, quieter, and produce less heat than either Mini-ITX or a laptop.

For instance:
http://www.soekris.com/

It's an X86 PC that boots off of a CF card. Perhaps you could use this with an external HD enclosure, or network-mounted storage?

Laptop disks = slow....

[StormForge]

The laptop has a poor CPU/$ ratio and those little laptop drives aren't very speedy compared to the average 3.5" disk.

Best bang for the buck is probably an off-the-shelf compact system with a low-end processor in it. Use power management and a LCD screen and the power consumption/heat won't be too bad. Replace the fans with quiet ones and tuck it in a corner somewhere. Go see what's available cheap at the big chains, or check out the compact machines that Dell is making these days...

-Bill

Seems overkill

[moosesocks]

Getting a P4 notebook or a mini-itx rig might even be overkill.

Think about it, how fast does a household server need to be? Assuming that you don't have anything more than a 1.5mbps 'net connection (which I highly dobut), you don't need massive processing power, or all the bells and whistles of a P4 notebook or Mini-ITX system. A Pentium3 or Pentium2 notebook may perfectly fit the bill. You can easily find a used P2 or P3 very cheaply.

That being said, I would steer clear of the VIA-powered systems. A 1ghz VIA chip is said to be slower than a 400mhz celron (ouch!). The P4/Athlon-based Mini-ITX rigs are a much better bet in terms of performance, but they will draw more power and make more noise (unless you choose to underclock the chip -- this has been proven to produce good results).

Of course, you may want to revaluate why you're even doing this. Why does a server need to consume low power and be quiet?

Re:Seems overkill

[questionlp]

Another plus side is that older laptops or older small-form factor desktops will probably have better driver support under Linux or *BSD (not always the case though).

For me, I have a dual P3-500 (which I'm actually thinking of pulling out the 2nd CPU to reduce power usage and heat production) with a 3Ware RAID controller acting has a Samba file server, MP3/Ogg streaming server, and thinking about using it has a VPN server if I go WiFi. Sure, it takes a longer time to compile a kernel or re-compile the base

Re:Seems overkill

[prefect42]

I agree with your point, but don't think you've stressed it enough. I've got a P133 with two 3Com network cards in doing routing and firewall duties. It can cope with about 80Mbit sustained traffic. That's not bad at all.

My server

[GiMP]

I have a pentium 166 as my router/firewall. I put in an old 256 megabyte harddrive, installed Linux, setup iptables, then copied the important files to a tmpfs filesystem, remounted / read-only, and spun-down the harddrive. A completely quiet system (the processor doesn't need a fan).

If you need more speed for some reason, try a Via C3 processor. With a good heatsink you shouldn't need a fan at all.. even if, the fans required make little or no noise.

I found that harddrives are too loud. If you need to write to the disk, get one of those 'low noise' harddrives. Alternatively, you can try a flash disk which would be quiet and wouldn't have to be spun-down; however, you would only have a limited number of writes.

Re:My server

[GiMP]

I'd like to add that my router/firewall is used to connect about 5 machines to the net' and route packets between 3 subnets. The router has 2 wired ethernet and one WiFi card. I use ssh+ppp for a VPN to authenticate wireless users.

Wired has one subnet, wireless has a subnet, and the VPN has a subnet. Having the multiple subnets makes filtering easier.

Re:My server

[spencerogden]

I have had really good xperiences with the newer Seagate ATA Harddrive. Even at 7200RPM I can barely hear them seeking.

Re:My server

[krir]

I bought a used PII system off of Ebay for 90 bucks. No processor fan, enough memory for what my server needs to do (web, mail, internal dns).

It was much cheaper than any laptop I've seen, and works great.

Re:My server

[GiMP]

I used a PII until I inherited the Pentium 166 after buying my mother a new computer (800mhz Duron).

The PII is now a development workstation.

Re:My server

[dasunt]

Similiar setup here, but I keep my HDDs running. Old P166, with a newer 80 gig HDD. It sits in the basement, running exim / leafnode / samba / imaps / bogofilter / iptables / NAT / DHCPd / CUPS / ident / sshd. Planning to throw a caching DNS server on their pretty quick, so I don't have to remember machine IPs on the local network, as well as setting up a ntp server for the house.

One bit of advice though: In my current system, the bottle neck seems to be the onboard IDE. If you do a lot of file tra

Best of both worlds

[Hardwyred]

What I have done is purchase a socket 370 Via C3 online (they go for like 30 bucks for a 900Mhz that uses very little power) and then just used an old socket 370 mini atx case (ya know, the one with 2 PCI slots and EVERYTHING else built onboard). No harddrives in it, I run everything off of CD and use Ramdisks for RW stuff. It's a little noisy when it first boots up but after 45 seconds or so, it's as quiet as a powersupply fan and a CPU fan can be. Cheap too, I think I have a total of 60 bucks invested (god love ebay). So in short, be a geek and build your own. The power difference over a year between the eden boards and a C3 you can buy will amount to a super sized extra value meal over a year.

Have been there many times

[mnmn]

Ive had to look for a small minimalist firewall+server, and the best thing Ive come across is an old Pentium1 IBM system. Its low-profile, and the power supply is 200W. 200MHz and 64MB Ram using FreeBSD has been enough for me serving 7 domains with their webpages, mysql and postgresql, qmail with virtualhosts, ircd, samba, VPN and other things I cant remember. Ive also installed similar systems at other places including homes and offices, and manage them through ssh. Uptimes have been since the installation and have never had a performance problemo.

Am thinking now to replace the IBM system with a Sun Ultra 5, just for the heck of it. I dont think you should go for a power-guzzling Duron or any system with a loud processor fan. Nor should you have to go with an ATX tower with extra drive bays. Be minimalistic and efficient and you wont need a Pentium4 unless you plan to serve your webpage through an IBM Websphere and DB2.

Re:Have been there many times

[BJH]

Beware - the Ultra 5 is not exactly quiet.

built in UPS...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and dont forget the built in UPS to boot...

Re:built in UPS...

[jon doh!]

not necessarily true, all the laptops i know of will kill the battery if its kept in there all the time. maybe if you rotate batteries or something..

Sounds Familiar

[Coyote67]

I too have been looking into putting together a small media server/web services
machine. A little research turned up, Mini-ITX [mini-itx.com].
I would start here, its a pretty good site that has a lot of information of
what you can do with mini-itx and features note worthy products as they come
out. Personally I think what you need is a HUSH [hushtechnologies.net].
Its the size of a dvd player, its completely silent and its so low power that
the power supply (95watts I think it is) is external. It might not be the cheapest
itx option out there but it fits all your (and mine) requirements and adds the
nice look factor aswell. They seem like a pretty good shop and they even let
you buy it without an OS, which I'm sure you'll (and me too but for different
reasons) appreciate. If you do get one I suggest getting it with 128ram and
buying more ram elsewhere, they're based in Germany and the value of the Euro
really shoots up the price of ram (and everything else I imagine). Btw I don'
work for these guys so don't assume I do, but I'd gladly trade a free one for
advertising these guys as often as possible.

And before anyone says it, I have imagined a beowulf cluster of these :)

G3 iMac

[splattertrousers]

If you don't mind going the Mac route, a G3 (CRT-based) iMac [apple.com] might be a good choice. A later model, like the 700 MHz one, runs Mac OS X well enough. Plus there's no fan, so the only noise is the HD (which can be spun down after a few minutes of inactivity). It also has a built-in monitor (which can power off after a few minutes of inactivity).

The gray ("Graphite"), blue ("Indigo") and white ("snow") models look nice and fit into most decors. They were selling new for about $800 until recently. Used ones should be in the $500 range.

Note that the G4-based flat panel iMacs and the G4-based CRT eMacs have CPU fans.

Re:G3 iMac

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Also consider an Athlon XP system with a micro-atx motherboard and a zalman cpu cooler (very quiet). If you go for a low-end Thoroughbred based Athlon XP, the peak wattage is only 45W - much less than a P4 based notebook. Plus, the XP 1700+ is going for $42 including shipping on NewEgg, and you can get a micro-ATX motherboard with LAN, audio, GeForce2 graphics, 3xPCI, 1xAGP, and 2 DDR slots for about $70. Add a laptop drive ($50), some DDR ($30 for 256M), a couple of NICs ($10 each), and a cheap case ($40)

Re:G3 iMac

[dr00g911]

A beige G3 (used ~$250) or an iMac (used between ~$350-$600) will work extremely well, and that's the setup I'm running here. Plop a $120 120 gig drive in the beasty and at least 128 megs of RAM an you're loaded for bear.

As a bonus, the iMac is plugged in on a shelf in the closet then connected over Airport, the monitor's set to power off after 5 minutes. Hard drive spins down after 1 hour of inactivity (seems to work best for me... the 5 second spin-up isn't usually noticable, and that should help extend the life of el cheapo drive)

That machine works as my home office's HTTP/FTP/Firewall/Router/POP/SMTP box/MP3 Repository/sliMP3 server/render farm manager. It's got plenty enough horsepower to even do a decent amount of real-time GDlib/Imagemagick work on some of my PHP/SQL development sites, and almost real-time PDF generation on-the-fly. It's also got various cronnable tasks running for logging and workstation maintenance.

As long as you're using the machine as a server and not interacting with Aqua (G3-class machines without Quartz extreme have some serious overhead when using Aqua), you've got more than enough power for what you're asking.

I've also got a shuttle box (SB51G) that's the most sound piece of Wintel hardware I've ever owned -- dirt cheap, super fast and it has AGP (IE testing, Maya and gaming is all Win's good for for me, anyhow -- I might as well have AGP). Reasonably cheap to put together ($250ish barebones) and Red Hat and Mandrake run very well on it if you're stuck on the Intel/AMD side of the fence.

I'm a scavenger and recycler myself when it comes to home servers. Web & file sharing services really don't require that much horsepower -- and OS X is *way* more elegant to administer than most Linux distros I've experienced.

But if you're looking at the Shuttle boxes and convinced to go that route, they're mighty sound, even if they aren't mini ITX. I believe they're technically micro-ATX. /semantics

Re:G3 iMac

[gozar]

Be wary of the newer models (mostly anything with a slot loading cd-rom). They never turn the monitor off (sure, you can set the energy saver, but it only blanks the screen, it doesn't turn it off).

The monitor is required to cool the machine. It uses convection. The monitor heats the air around it, that air rises bringing in cool air underneath. They get mighty warm, although I do know of others that have used them in a server configuration.

What?

[Feztaa]

If your laptop/server is more important than your fridge, you have a serious problem, methinks.

Shuttle != mini-itx

[phUnBalanced]

Just wanted to point this out. Not to be a jerk.

my experiences

[gnudutch]

Here we use a P120 laptop w/OpenBSD as a wireless router. Used to serve files and mysql webs off it but got slow, so moved serving to a "mini" system.

Don't use the MSI NetPC MS-6215T [msicomputer.com] system as a server. The power supply is only 90 watts. I ran it 24/7 for a year, the next time I powered it down, it wouldn't power back up. Was running a P3 Tualatin (low power) 1.13ghz, Geforce PCI card, Wifi, and 60gb hard drive. Now I power the system with a standard sized ATX power supply sitting outside the case. Works b

An old notebook is fine but...

[mzs]

I used an old notebook (TI TM4000M 486/75) for a firewall and print server. The LCD screen was broken so I just removed it. I could do pretty much everything from a network connection to it and I used an external monitor while setting it up. I used two bargain pccard NIC's. A neat benefit of using an old notebook like this is that you have an automatic UPS for it because it will switch over to battery and you can have it save your print queue to disk.

I used the notebook as a fileserver in college, but that

I do this

[Ratbert42]

I have a stack of Dell P2-266 laptops I got cheap at auction. Two of those running all the time is a lot less space, noise and heat than a single desktop. Still, they aren't silent and they do put out some heat.

The idea of batteries as a UPS is kind of a problem. You'll probably fry the expensive battery in less than a year. I only use batteries when I need to move the machines and run on a real UPS the rest of the time.

Memory on an older laptop can be a problem. The ones I have use EDO SO-DIMMs. Going from 2x64m to 2x128m would cost me $300-800. If I had picked laptops that used a pair of SDRAM sticks, I could probably get to 256m for $50.

One of my biggest problems with using these laptops as servers is that it feels like such a waste. I've got friends that could still squeeze a good bit of life out of them, especially on a wireless lan. In fact I've given away most of my stack and I'm down to just one busted-up spare.

Consider a flashdisk

[isaac]

For what it's worth, old laptops can make great servers for low-intensity use. One trick I've used before is to remove the hard disk and replace it with a compactflash card attached to a CF2.5" IDE adaptor in order to A. replace the only moving part with something less failure prone and B. make the laptop silent instead of merely quiet.

The only caveat is that you need to have enough ram for your application to never need swap (64 meg is more than enough for basic non-X, non-java server and/or firewall use). Never ever run a swap file or partition on flash media - you will quickly exhaust the limited write cycles of the flash media.

-Isaac

USR8200

[metamatic]

US Robotics have just launched the USR8200 storage router [usr.com]. XScale based, runs Linux. Plug in a Firewire drive and it's a file server.

Just get a 2nd hand ofice workstation

[l0rd]

The answer to your question is quite simple, just get a 2nd hand dell (or any other make) office workstation. There are plenty of these out there, they're cheap & they're compact (you could even just put one under your hifi system). They are also quite reliable.

You don't need a monitor or keyboard for a simple server (that's what ssh & vnc is for ;) ), and even if you do you cn get a cheap old 15" monitor & keyboard for close to nohting.

If you buy and old pII and underclock it you don't even n

My solution

[kableh]

I just happened across an old Macintosh 7200 one day, a coworker heard I dug old Macs and thought I might have a use for it. This particular Mac has a 120MHz PPC processor, had a 16 MB memory chip of sorts in it, and a 1GB SCSI hard drive. It is PCI based, so I was able to just throw some 3Com NICs in it. Cost-wise I couldn't tell you, since all this stuff was free or laying around. It is very quiet though, only a small power supply fan. 120MHz and 16MB of RAM has no problem routing/filtering 2Mbps whi

power supply for mini-itx

[fist_187]

i'm using a mini-itx (800 Mhz version) as a home server right now. i have it mounted to a wooden shelf, without a case.

the board and hard drive (2.5" laptop drive) use little enough power that i was able to take the fan out of the power supply without it overheating (its been 10 months). with adequate ventilation you should be able to rip the fan out also- just remove the cover of the power supply or drill some extra holes in it so the air can circulate.

mini-itx makes 2 fanless motherboards as well, b

Netwinder

[rsax]

Check out the Netwinder line [netwinder.net] of small servers. I'm running a couple here with the Debian ARM port.

well i use...

[itzdandy]

I run a miniITX with a C3-900Mhz. I got a nice little CF->IDE adapter on ebay for $10 and use a 128MB CF card for permanent storage. The machine has 512MB of RAM and i have a custom gentoo setup.

i run gentoo on my main box and export /use/portage via NFS so its available on the server. The server runs a basic system without X/sound/etc.

XBOX

[Anonymous Coward]

How about an XBOX? $180, stylish, small, and a game console to boot (no pun intended)!

Re:XBOX

[Glonoinha]

Dang! I was reading the comments to see if anybody had said this already ... I was eager to pounce.

A modded Xbox seems like the perfect hacker accessory with respect to home appliances. Seems perfect for game time during the down season. And is CHEAP.

Notebook a bit noisy

[slim]

I have a Toshiba Libretto with a P75 CPU, which I'm currently using as a home server: it's quiet, it's quite powerful enough to run Apache with SSL on Debian, and it does everything I need.

However, even the small noise it does make, is pretty annoying when trying to listen to a quiet passage of music, DVD, etc. (it's in my front room).

So if you're starting from scratch, I'd recommend getting an VIA Eden 600Mhz based mini-itx setup, so it's silent, and assuming you need a lot of storage, invest in a laptop

Don't use a P3 dell laptop.

[SmallFurryCreature]

I had to use one as a server for a while (development) and we also had to lock them away as anything left on the desk would evaporate. The heat generated melted my chocolate biscuites two drawers up. Mmmm, melted chocolate.

Laptops are very very bad with heat. They are not really designed to run 24/7.

So as others suggested the Mini-ITX is cheaper, more efficient and a lot more likely to stand up to working 24/7. You can also add decent harddrives and memory.

Avoid BookPCs and/or small wattage power supplies!

[cmehta1]

I bought a micro-ATX Book PC and had to replace the power supply 3 times. They are notorious for putting in cheap@ss power supplies that simply burn out for a couple different reasons.

The 3rd time I simply extracted the motherboard and everything else to another full size case with a power supply with 2-3 times the capacity.

Check out http://groups.msn.com/BOOKPC/powersupply.msnw for more info.

Pentium? Luxury!

[Mignon]

My always-on (*) box (http, ftp, smtp, pop3, telnet, ssh, local print server) is an Epson 660 Notebook with a 486 running at something like 66 MHz and 20 MB RAM. It has no problems (**) providing those services and it's quiet - I don't recall it having a fan - and not particularly hot, which is probably why it doesn't have a fan.

* Except when it's not.
** Except when it does.

Here's what I use...

[Rude Turnip]

I bought an EPIA 5000 board with a 500MHz VIA C3 built-in for $90. I picked up a 128MB stick of PC133 for $15 on ebay and a blue IBM Netvista Flex-ATX case for another $30 or so. I had a 40gig Maxtor sitting around.

Using a CDROM drive temporarily connected to the setup, I installed Clarkconnect, which is based upon Red Hat 7.3. Clarkconnect gives you a simple web-based interface and lets you run and manage several types of servers, including mail, samba, DNS and Squid. The box runs headless tucked into

find an old P-166, they are everywhere

[hansoncoyne]

you parents probably have an old P-166 one in their basement next to a Amana Radar Range that died back in '85. Find a frind that has a zip-lock bag full of old simms (you know who you are). But do purchase two new hard drives and set up raid 1. total cost about $100. my p-pro has been running for about 4 years now 24/7 (other than a hard drive failue). scrap the monitor and key board once its set up. use ssh.

Older Pentium

[a9db0]

I second the older Pentium solutions. Mine is a 233, with 256MB and 2 60GB HDs mirrored. Mount on a standard size board which supports multiple PCI cards (3 ethernet), install in a mid-tower with a small ps, add only necessary fans and put in a closet. It's fully functional, expandable, cheap, and reasonably energy efficient.

Service Processors, not Laptops

[vrmlguy]

They look the same at first glance, but service processors are the boxes that control really big data equipment, like disk arrays and heavy duty communications equipement. They are usually mounted in the door to swing down when needed. They are manufactured by laptop makers like Twinhead, but there are several differences. For instance, the batteries are usually removed (avoiding leakage problems) and the hard drive is server quality. They are designed to run for years on end, monitoring the big box, an

Mini-Itx and via c-3

[bluelan]

When I get some time, I'm going to do this.

• $ 94.00 - 120GB hard drive (~7W)
• $ 80.00 - Pinnacle PCTV Pro capture card, stereo sound, software mpeg2 encoding.
• $170.00 - VIA EPIA-M10000 nehemiah (~28W peak) integrated video 6 channel audio 10/100 LAN 2xpc133 ata100 1 pci 1 USB connector for 2 USB 1.1 ports TV-out
• $ 40.00 - Toshiba DVD-ROM drive, CD-ROM, DVD-RAM too (~20W)
• $ 60.00 - Nice Dolby sound card
• $ 20.00 -

Re:Mini-Itx and via c-3

[Lester67]

The M10000 isn't fanless. It's predecessors were... it is not.

Laptops & 486s

[suwain_2]

First, you mention that a laptop doesn't generate much heat. While it doesn't necessarily heat up my room as much as my dual Athlon box, certain areas of the laptop get red-hot, even on new ones. I end up putting things between the laptop and my lap to prevent myself from getting set on fire. (Okay, small exaggeration...) I'd be concerned about overheating with it running 24/7. I'd actually suggest a 486. Someone threw away four or five ones (smallish cases, too) at my local dump (erm, recycling center...

Buy a server class machine...

[Wojski]

I just picked up 5 Dell Servers to replace my aging home server farm. These machines go for $300 (after rebates) and have a 2.4Ghz P4 with a 40MB harddrive and 128MB RAM. Best of all the only use 250W power supplies so you won't need dedicated wiring. Toss in a 100GB or 200GB drive sprinkle in some RAM and your looking at a machine worthy of any small business setup that can handle anything you throw at it.

I vote for Mini-ITX

[jht]

My home server is a Mini-ITX box that I bought from iDot Computers - it's a C3-533 processor in a case using an external PSU (feeding direct DC into the case and avoiding one fan that way). The lower-speed C3 is fanless, and I put a 30GB laptop 2.5" HD in it to lower heat even further, letting me disconnect the internal fan as well. The server's got 512MB of RAM, and it runs e-Smith [e-smith.org] server (based loosely on RedHat) with a plug-in package for Spamassassin added in.

I use it for file storage, web and mail s