[Pringals]

Work just updated all their computers and I can get a hold of one of the old ones for $20, an old Dell Optiplex GX240 (full tower version).


Pentium 4 1.8-ghz

Intel's 845 chip set

1gig PC133 SDRAM

Windows XP Professional

(Hard drive removed)


Initially, I thought I'd pop in one of my old hard drives and put in on craigslist for $50. Now I'm wondering if it would be suitable as a media server of sorts. I've yet to build my HTPC (budgeting for this fall), so for now, I'd only be loading it up with my DVD's and music.


What would you do with this?

 

[candre23]

A 1.8GHz P4 is faster than the 1.6GHz Atom chips they're putting in WHS boxes, so you should have no problem power-wise. You may be a bit short on usable drive bays and SATA/IDE ports though. If you need more ports, one of these will set you straight for cheap.


If you just want to share a few folders over the network, then any networkable OS is fine. If you want redundancy and advanced server features, then I suggest either unRAID (free, complicated) or Windows Home Server (not free, not complicated).