Computer for home server?

[bogle111]

Fed up spending a small fortune on computers, laptops & desktops, at work and home, I took advice from a network specialist as looking for a good unit for work use on Photoshop & Illustrator. Found the Dell 490 Dual Zeon with 4GB & 80gb 10K hard drive and loaded with XP Pro. Built like a tank and so easy to change HDs. Also has a pro quality graphics card and will take 5 HDs.

Device manager recognises 4 processors and have to admit, this thing flies even on the net. Chomps through Illustrator and rip programmes for wide format printers like butter.:idea:

As these were only £150 inc vat, so we bought two.

What are your thoughts on one of these as a home server for music and could you recommend what else may be needed please?

[slate]

Playing music requires very little processor power and with 4 cores it should be dandy.

You would need to add a big harddrive; the 80 GB does not last long when you start ripping your CDs. You should rip to a lossless format eg FLAC, and as a rule 3 CDs = 1 GB FLAC.
How large is your collection?

As this was a little Workstation in its time, I could be worried how much power it uses and the noise it produces.

Off cause noise is not a problem if you are going for a networked player eg Squeezebox or Sonos.

And powerconsumption can be kept down using Wake On Lan; WOL requires the server to be wired to the LAN.
Still I would check how much power it use running in idle.... add 8-10 watt for an extra harddrive (WD Green series).

Myself I have ripped my 800'ish CDs in FLAC (300 GB) and have it on a low power server feeding a Squeezebox Touch + 2 * Squeezebox Receivers