Components!
For the motherboard, I chose the ASRock H61M/U3S3. They say ASRock is a sister company of Asus which sells more budget-friendly motherboards but I still find their products reliable. ASRock motherboards have earned my trust and this is the third time I bought one for personal use. This model has two of the most important features I am looking for in a mobo. One is the gigabit LAN, and second the two USB 3.0 ports. It's pretty future-proof for a very competitive price of Php3,100.
The processor is the next thing to eye for when choosing components. It was a pretty hard decision between a single core AMD Sempron 145 2.7GHz, an Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz, and a dual core Intel Pentium G620 running stock at 2.6GHz. When I was still trying to come up with the specs I was really in a dilemma. I didn't know if I were to build a server solely for file sharing, or a media server that I can use in the future with the PS3 or a new TV. But then Dad told me he's sponsoring my expenses so I went for the best choice among the three, the G620! =D
I got the Antec VP350 for the power supply. This PSU supplies a 350w true rated power which is more than enough for all the components even if I place additional hard drives. Got this for Php1,500.
For the other components, it was really a choice of which costs lower. Like the RAM, it doesn't really add up to the performance as long as I get 4GB at least. So I asked my favorite computer parts dealer for the cheapest 4GB single stick RAM they had and they gave me a Geil ram stick (which is a brand I also trust) with an orange heat-spreader. Php1,050
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The casing I chose personally. It's an Emaxx Rebel Gaming Chassis. It's an all black mATX casing which supports 4 hard drives and has four USB 2.0 ports at the front panel. I'm very glad I went for this since it's a lot better than in the picture and it's a bargain in my opinion. Php1,350.
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I had a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4EG that I was using as a data drive for my computer and I decided to use it for the server instead to lower down the expenses. At first I made a partition of 50GB for the operating system but then decided to buy and use a separate 160GB hard disk for the Linux OS to avoid complications in the future. Got a second hand Seagate hard drive for about Php1,200 via TipidPC.
The last but not the least, I used an old stock 120mm fan from my Thermaltake V3 casing for the bottom air intake and I replaced the stock front panel fan with a NZXT 140mm fan which I bought for Php420 from Dynaquest.
All is running fine now. Installed Ubuntu 12.04 as my operating system and used Samba for our network file sharing protocol. This took me a while to make it work since it wasn't cooperating with me very well at the start. For some reason, after doing loads of trial and error, my laptop managed to access the shared folder hosted by the server I built.
For my torrent client, I use Deluge. I can access it from anywhere as long as I have a web browser and an internet connection. I can also access it from school which is a pretty cool thing considering the school's intranet is covered with proxy. This was made possible by my router's dynamic DNS support. For the DNS service, I use DynDNS.
Lastly, for remote desktop browsing, I use Teamviewer. This is the first time I really appreciated such programs since I only use remote access to play and piss my sister off before, haha. I also setup all necesarry services to start automatically upon boot such as a script to mount the shared hard disk, Deluge daemon, and Teamviewer so it is only a matter of powering the server on and shutting it down whenever I have to use it.
Now the server is all set up. I just had to plugin the LAN cable and of course the power cable to make it run. No necessary keyboard, mouse, and monitor to connect since I can control it via any Teamviewer-equipped computer like my laptop! =)
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