FishH2o,
It would help to know a budget, but my suggestion to have the best cost / performance, expandability, and reliability is to buy a good, used Dell Precision. My favorite is the T7500 and many wer sold with a pair of the excellent Xeon x5680's- 3.33 / 3.6 six core processors- still in the running today as a fast CPU. These are fast, reliable, and very close to servers in every way. These are often sold with 24 or 48GB RAM. Add a used LSI Logic and a 512GB SSD plus large mech'l storage drives and with a reasonable graphics card, this kind of system can do about anything. For example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-PRECISION-T7500-2x-3-33GHz...
> a completed listing for a T7500 with 2X X5680 CPU's, 12 GB RAM for $1,069. This would benefit from more RAM, new, larger drives and a good graphics card, but could probably get going as is and be gradually enhanced to have a really fast, solid, system for perhaps $2,000.
Another tactic for an inexpensive server simply would be to buy a used server with a pair of Xeon CPU's of a reasonable speed. These systems usually can accommodate a lot of RAM- even old Dell Poweredge can use 192GB- and there is a of course a lot of room for drives, they use ECC error correcting RAM and there are always good RAID controllers with fast transfer rates and automatic backup and restore. I've read to allow for 15-25GB per VM. If you have such a server, you can also attach one or more fast systems as nodes in case you're doing 3D modeling, custom algorithmic, calculation-intensive stuff, or etc. requiring high clock speeds and fast graphics. Servers are usually not valuable when sold as they've been running a long time continuously, and not understood by many PC users (I know too little myself), but they are also deigned to do this and are usually carefully maintained. A couple of weeks ago I was
given a Poweredge 2600 with dual 2.1 Xeons with 32GB RAM, 2X 35GB and 3X 76GB 10K drives on a PERC controller with Server 2003 and a 24-port hub and Wifi router out of an architectural office that was closing- it would've been simply thrown away. To learn about servers, I'm thinking of giving Linux, VM, and servers a try before it moves on to a good home.
Here;s an example of a more modern server with good potential:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R710-SERVER-2x-X...
> completed listing for a Poweredge R710 with 2X Xeon X5677, 48 GB RAM, 2X 146GB drives for $600. Note that this does not include the OS. If you go in the server direction, look for servers using DDR3 rather than DDR2 RAM which is more expensive and runs very hot.
Cheers,
BambiBoom
HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3923, CPU= 9223/ 2D= 839 / 3D=2048]
Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB DDR2 ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit > [Passmark system rating = 1859, CPU = 8528 / 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]
Dell Precision 390 (2005) Xeon x3230 quad core @ 2.67GHz > 6 GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Firepro V4900 (1GB)> 2X WD 320GB > Windows 7 Profession 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1431, CPU = 3642 / 2D= 433 / 3D=1346]
2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects