Hello all, first post

I'm in the process of building a Linux (Debian to be precise) server that will be going into a datacentre in the UK.

The specification I've come up with is:

1 x INTEL QUAD CORE XEON X3360 2.50GHZ FSB1333 45NM 12MB CACHE
1 x INTEL S3210SHLX (SOCKET LGA775, 1333MHZ FSB, VGA, 2 x 1000MB NIC, MATRIX RAID 0,1,5,10)
2 x Western Digital WD5001AALS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache
2 x CRUCIAL 2GB, 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400 memory module CT25672AA800

The case is coming from a company I've dealt with for years and will have a 350W power supply.

Now I've come to order the component, the motherboard seems to be sold out absolutely everywhere in the UK.

Can anybody suggest another motherboard / cpu combo for an entry level server?

Many thanks!
Col.

Couple of things:

If you're concerned with performance, consider 10K RPM drives and more memory (I hope you're planning on RAID1), depending on your application. What kind of content are you serving? Dynamic content from a CMS? Static HTML? Large files?

Also, consider a slightly higher power PSU. 350W is not huge these days, not with a CPU that draws ~100W. Disk drives can be quite power hungry too.

Have you considered the S3200SHV?

10K rpm drives are a good idea if you need more performance but the cost of them is quite a bit more than the standard 7200rpm drives, $300CAD for 300GB 10K vs $60CAD for 500GB 7200.
Another option besides 10K rpm drives would be picking up 2 more hard drives and going with RAID10. You get the speed increase of RAID0, essentially doubling your read/write speed, as well as the redundancy incase a hard drive dies in the future so you still have all of the data. Of course if you have other backup solutions you won't need the redundancy.
You will want at least a 600W power supply as well so that even under max load you won't be pushing the power supply too hard.

You do not have to select a motherboard made by Intel. You could select Tyan or Supermicro for server motherboards.

Processors for desktops could be used if you select high quality motherboards and do not mind adding a better NIC. AMD desktop processors includes ECC memory support that Intel desktop processors lack.

I suggest consider AMD processors if you are going with that processor because you gain performance at the same price. AMD Opteron Shanghai processor beats that processor. If you are thinking using virtual machines, AMD Opteron Istanbul looks better even against Xeon X5000 series.

I recommend use something similar to Western Digital Raptor series because of their low latency at around 5 ms which helps to provide better performance for servers. Using desktop hard drives should not be used for servers because your system will be waiting instead it should be serving.

If you insist on using Intel processors, a TYAN S5211G2NR might be a good choice because it has PCI, PCI-X, and PCIe to support old and new hardware. I suggest use a "true" hardware RAID controller from either 3ware or Areca.

Are you on the same page about servers or are you explaining about desktops. Servers and desktops have different requirements. Server requires low latency storage system for fast retrieval while desktops access large amounts of data to be transferred because of today's desktop programs have a larger foot print compared to programs in the past. Stripping levels of RAID does not add any performance for servers. They aid in time to do back ups.

It is not feasible for a server to use power supply with a lot of watts. It is best to balance the power supply and efficiency, so the server does not consume too much power. A 600 watt power supply for a small server is too much and it will consume too much power during use. Usually servers are not upgraded every few months like desktops.