Hi, I am building a new server for home and business use that I would like to be future proof. I have already bought the case which is a Corsair 800D (please check specification at http://www.corsair.com/pc-cases/obsidian-series-pc-case/obsidian-series-800d.html
My next purchase will be the mother board for the server for which I am looking to spend around £500. I fully envisage utilising all of the cases facilities over time and use this as a template for one or two additional tower servers that will link together.
My objective is to primarily run a deducated webhosting service for my sites and use the server for general business purposes as well.
Therefore the server must be able to run Windows Server, CentOS, WHM, PLESK, Cpanel, MS Project Enterprise Edition, Palasade @Risk for Projects, Project in a Box Enterprise Edition, all of the usual MS Office Tools, Flash, CAD and of course other programs.
I did notice that general desktop mother boards can utilize upto 128gb of memory and on investigation found that server mother boads can outstrip this many times.
I am not sure if my planned i7 2011 Extreme Edition processor would be better than two or four lower cost processors giving the same advantages.
Because I will eventually be utilising all of the HD bays with the largest HD's that I can find. The mother board must be able to accomodate a RAID system.
When not working in my SOHO I like to play games with my kids or do creative art work so the boad must be able to accomodate high speed DIM 3 slots as well as DIM2's
I have already built two desktop computers in the past, but these are now far to slow for my present needs and definately will not satisfy the needs of my customers in the future. Seeing as this is my first attempt at building a server I I really do need some expert advice on selecting the best server mother board to satisfy my needs within the price range specified above.
What comes to mind that should tick all of these boxes is a high spec gaming server motherboard, but I might be wrong.
The reason for such a high spec system is that as a stategic business and marketing professional I know that business activities can explode and take off in all sorts of entrepreneurial directions and I do not want to be cought short a year or so down the line.
Kind regards
Stephan Toth