Turning my old gaming computer into my first fileserver

Hello,

Well first off list your complete specifications of your old computer...then we could go about reccomending stuff. Motherboard...CPU...ram...etc

not very much is needed to turn a pc into a file server today. just a mb with a few good sata ports and a drive enclosers to hold the drives.
http://www.icydock.com/index.php
some drives and a file server os (Microsoft or any other file server software).
one good working Ethernet port.
i would start by looking at your mb chipset and what lev of raid they do (1/5/10).
some people if the mb chipset is real old or they dont want to have any raid issues they toss in an adaptec controler card.
use a cheap small drive and the os drive then put your larger drives on the raid card.

First, look at your motherboard - does it have enough disk connections (SATA) for at least three drives you would like to start with (one for OS, two for storage). Then, look at the case - how many disks you can stuff here without overheating? Finally, your power supply - does it have enough juice for five or ten hard disks?

You can reduce the load on the hard drive if you replace your power-hungry videocard with something more modest.

As for software - if Windows is your domain, you can (at least initially) keep it as is. One logical upgrade would be Windows Home Server.

There are plenty of Linux-based NAS-like operating systems around to play with. It all depends on what you want your file server to serve - files, media etc.

I was actually about to ask the same question myself. I was thinking of upgrading my desktop and use the old E6600 Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processor and 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM kit from it. There was about a $50 mini-ITX motherboard on Newegg I was thinking of purchasing for the setup since my current ATX motherboard in there seems a bit big, and of course I would need a few hard drives. I've just never dealt with RAID/NAS setups so I wasn't too sure how those parts would fare in it, or if I would be better off getting some DDR3 and a Llano APU for about $150 now and save myself the trouble later on. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I was actually about to ask the same question myself. I was thinking of upgrading my desktop and use the old E6600 Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processor and 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM kit from it. There was about a $50 mini-ITX motherboard on Newegg I was thinking of purchasing for the setup since my current ATX motherboard in there seems a bit big, and of course I would need a few hard drives. I've just never dealt with RAID/NAS setups so I wasn't too sure how those parts would fare in it, or if I would be better off getting some DDR3 and a Llano APU for about $150 now and save myself the trouble later on. Any suggestions would be appreciated!