Sinanym.com

I finally got an invite to Google Voice last week, but just set it up and tried it today.First impression is that it is an extremely useful and powerful service. Of course as with all new things, there are still some bugs to be worked out. SMS is slow and there are some quirks that need to be worked out. For instance, all texts come from a (406) number, which is owned by Google. Because of this, you don’t see who the text is from initially but only the orignal number appended to the text. So if you don’t have your friends/family’s numbers memorized, it can be a bit confusing. All in all though, I’m excited to be using it and I can’t wait for updates and improvements to the service and the Blackberry application especially.

This is a detailed hardware list for my budget server build. This machine is used as a media server, occassional game server, and test box for projects.

Main System

• Motherboard: Tyan Thunder K8HM Dual Socket 940
• PSU: Athena Power 500W EPS12V
• CPU:  AMD Opteron 270 at 2.0Ghz (dual-core x2)
• RAM:  512MB (x4) PC3200 (2GB total)
• Graphics: Onboard ATI ES1000 (32MB buffer)
• Secondary Graphics: eVGA nVidia 8800GT 512MB
• HDD1: Samsung Spinpoint T-Series 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA
• HDD2: Samsung Spinpoint T-Series 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA
• HDD3: Seagate Barracuda ST3500630NS 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA
• HDD4: Seagate Barracuda ST3500630AS 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA

This is a detailed hardware list of my current desktop system. Aside from general web browsing and word processing, the primary use for this machine is gaming.

Main System

• Case: Lian-Li PC-V1000B Plus, Black, Mid-tower
• PSU: Enermax Liberty 500W, Modular
• Motherboard: Asus P5K-E Deluxe
• CPU: Intel Core2 Duo ‘Conroe’, overclocked to 3.02Ghz
• RAM: G.Skill 2×2GB PC6400 5-5-5-15
• Graphics: MSI Radeon HD4850 512MB (xxx/xxxMhz)
• HDD: 2x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS, RAID 0
• Lite-on EIDE DVD Burner, Black

Accessories

• Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
• Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution Wireles
• Monitor: Viewsonic VG2230WM 22″ Widescreen LCD
• Speakers: Klipsch ProMedia 2.1

Miscellaneous

• Case Fans: 2x Scythe Slip-Stream, 120mm (1 front intake, 1 rear exhaust)
• HSF: Xigmatex HDT-S1283 Rifle, Scythe S-Flex 120mm fan

Have you ever wanted your own sever at home, but thought it was too expensive? If you don’t mind hunting for deals and/or using pulled parts (components pulled from other machines to be sold individually) then you can put together a decently powerful machine for a surprisingly low price.

Below I have listed the components chosen for my first personal server build. It’s nothing fancy, and the final machine will end up being a little more power than I had intended and definitely more than I really need for what will likely be a glorified NAS box slash media server.

• Tyan Thunder K8HM dual socket 940 motherboard – $58.88
• AMD Opteron 270 2.0Ghz dual-core processor (2) – $61 (used)
• 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM (4) – $39.96
• Athena Power 550W EPS12V power supply – $59.99
• Samsung Spinpoint T Series 500GB SATA HDD – $127.08
• Foxconn NBT-CMAK87B-C socket 940 heatsink and fan – $13.41

The operating system will initially be the Windows 7 release candidate, just to play around with it. Ubuntu will likely take the stage afterwards, but any of the various Linux distros would work equally as well. Honestly, I just love saying Ubuntu.

The hard drives listed above are currently in my desktop machine. I bought two 1TB Western Digital Black drives to replace the Samsungs, which are really better suited for a silent, low-power machine.

So for about $400 with a case (I haven’t decided on ATX or rack mount) I have a machine boasting four 2.0Ghz processing cores with 2GB of RAM. Definitely overkill for a standard home server, but I can’t ignore a good deal on components. You could easily run 256MB of RAM for each CPU, a single hard drive, cheaper power supply, and a case you have lying around the house.

This will be my personal blog about the various projects I am working on. My current project is a wiki for the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Online MMO, which is tentatively scheduled for release sometime in late 2011. Right now the wiki is just a testing space, but if I start attracting contributors and readers, I may move it to its own shared hosting account and use the base domain. As it is configured now, the domain wiki40k.com redirects to a subdirectory of sinanym.com. Check it out and leave some comments and suggestions.

-d