Guys,
I built my current home server from the components of an older gaming PC - LGA1366 platform (i7-920, Asus Rampage Gene MB, 9 GB DDR3 RAM). I was trying to spend as little money as possible, given that I didn't know how the server "experiment" would turn out. I figured that, if things turned out well, I could spend small amounts of money, here and there as I had it, to slowly upgrade the machine. As it turns out, the experiment has gone quite well - I keep adding additional services as I have time and want/need.
Well, I have an opportunity for a large®, one-time upgrade, and I'm looking for hardware recommendations from you guys for the guts (MB, CPU, RAM, networking equipment). I'm mostly happy with my current machine, but it 1) runs a little loud, 2) sucks a lot of power, and 3) doesn't have enough SATA ports on the MB for all the hard disks I want to plug in.
I use the server for daily backups, media streaming (Subsonic), as a web server and blogging platform, and as an email server/archiver. My next project is to set up an FTP server and OwnCloud for remote file access.
What do you recommend as a good CPU+MB+RAM combo that gives me enough juice to run all these services, gives me lots of SATA ports, has good network connectivity, and doesn't suck too much power?
Phillip
PS - I'm running a $50 router that the server is connected to. Is there any benefit to upgrading to a better router?