Xseries for home use

[TeenageGenius]

hey guys. i am going to purchase an xseries case w/ motherboard and not much else. it is, i believe, the dual xeon processor model. i want to gradually put money into it, to get it to boot and have some fun w/ it. it has a big case and i want to put my xbox inside with the computer. anyways, i love the ability for 16gb of ram and 880gb of hard drives, thats cool. my question is this, what sockets are the xeons, can a p4 be put in their place, cause xeons are pricy. also, what are some specs on the motherboard. please cut me some slack, i am only 14, but i have become the techie for my school and friends. i have a good amount of knowledge, but i don't know much about ibm servers. thanks for any help.
-Mark

 

[Davetoo]

I think you'd be much better off building your own instead of buying an IBM server just to play with.

Our backup server is built from Newegg items and we can put over a terabyte of hard drives inside it and more RAM than you'll need for the next five years. Total cost for everything was what the barebone IBM system would have cost.



I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[JMurrah]

I've thought about putting a server in the house from time to time, both because of capacity, performance, and coolness Unless you've got loads of money to spend, I'd say go find an old Dell Poweredge case on ebay, they're pretty good size (enough room for your xbox), and have plenty of potential. Then you can spend all the money you save on server/workstation hardware, like a dually opteron board or something like that.

Good luck!