-= Gametoast.com =-

It being Black Friday/Cyber Weekend/Close to Cyber Monday, I decided to finally check out some hardware components to build an inexpensive, but relatively powerful gaming server tower.

What I intend to do:
- Host multiple game servers for small groups of people (between 2 to 10, depending on the game) possibly all at once
- Servers include: Minecraft, TF2, SWBF2, Teamspeak?
- Store file backups for my home network

Here's what I'm looking at:
BIOSTAR ECO HD61V Barebones kit - $100
Intel Core i5-2310 Sandy Bridge 2.9GHz Quad Core - $160
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 RAM - $28
WD Blue 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - $70
ASUS 24X DVD Burner - $20

Total = $378 + $16 S&H

Main Questions:
- Is the i5 Quad too much? Or will I need all four processors as opposed to an i3 Dual since I plan on hosting more than 1 or 2 servers at a time?

- Should I sacrifice harddrive space and upgrade to a cheap 120Gb SSD? Such as this one? Bear in mind I'd also need an adapter for it

- The barebones kit supports two harddrives. Should I invest in a second and if so, how? Two HDDs? Two cheap SSDs? One of each?

I am not asking for brand preferences or better deals on different hardware. Unless it's crucial to the performance of the server, IE I need more (or less) power, or I can get the same product cheaper at a different site. I've read multiple product reviews and made my own decisions like a big boy. I just have a few questions since I've never built a machine like this before.

What ISP/backbone - who Is your provider , I'd say piles of ram and your connection are most important for even a single dedicated game server... then dual proc and piles if fans to keep it cool.

If your on a home Dsl account your upspeed will he so low that anyone not within 100 miles of you is going to have a 120+ ping.

Alright, thanks for the heads up. If the servers gain attention, then I might upgrade my ISP to a business connection, but until then, it's mainly just friends and family, anyway. And I like to think I did an okay job hosting the GT Minecraft server from my home connection.

true i guess with under 20 players at any time you may be ok, i guess im just speaking from trying games on my home pcs, my att dsl (uverse) is supposed to be the fastest in usa for non business but its usually capped from what i see in tests so that my upspeed is always worse then 3gb so in turn i can host big games on my dedicated pay hosting server thats provided for $600 a month by rackspace and softlayer or i can have slow horrible pings from my home slop and only play with about 6 or less people, all of whom i can only pray are on prime machines with uber isps. lol.

anyways good luck and happy xmas!

Here's a 120GB SSD for about your asking price: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/ocz-intern ... 25sat3120g

And here's a similar HDD to the one you already have for a lower price: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-di ... e-wd5000ys

And here's one with a lower price than that with double the space: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-in ... 31000524as

I didn't price-compare all your parts, just the HDD/SSD. Here's a build I was working on recently, it shares some parts with the things I've recommended (prices have probably changed since I've ordered these, but I've ordered all the parts within the past week, so sales aside they should be in the neighborhood. I know the price of my HDD went up from $70 back to its original price). http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pJLz

Edit: I know you asked not for brand redirects, but I figured it's more-or-less a nonissue on storage. I linked to the site because it looked like you were shopping entirely Newegg, and you can find better deals off Newegg occasionally if you use a powerful price-comparison tool. Obviously, you also asked this a few days ago on Black Friday, and some deals were in place then that aren't now. Hopefully I'm not just spitting into the wind.

Yeah, I already got the parts. I did look at that Seagate HDD, but after reading the reviews for Seagate HDDs, I felt safer going with a WD.

BUT, I will be bookmarking that website. Looking into building a gaming desktop in the near future, and what I was doing for this build was looking at parts on Newegg, then Googling the part to see if there was a better deal somewhere. So thank you for the site, it will help greatly.