On home linux servers

I've been giving some thought to the next iteration of my Linux server, currently named Hohenheim. No reason for the name, other than I thought Hohenheim sounded cool. Currently it's a barebones AMD kit I put together (no hardware or configuration worth bragging about ). I use it enough that I'd miss having it. Originally I was just planning on ripping out it's guts and upgrading the hardware to the point where it's good enough to serve double duty as a Vista gaming machine - not Crysis good, but StarCraft II or Diablo III good - and having it liquid cooled. The liquid cooling for style and somewhat weakly justifiable because I do run the processor constantly, wether ripping DVDs with HandBrake (video encoding makes a CPU it's bitch) or donating the cycles to Folding@home, so keeping it frosty would be a must. The near silent operation and overclocking possibilities are pluses too. But recently I've changed thought tracks to something radically different.

It started with some comments that are now probably buried in the lifhacker post: What Kind of Server are You Running at Home? Basically a guy was talking about his Bubba Server, which sounds a bit like an external hardrive enclosre with a supersmall motherboard and processor. There are also interesting debates on how powerful a server needs to be in the article that made me reconsider my planned rig. I mean, everything I use on a regular basis runs from the CLI and could be run with all the processing power of an SNES (though granted, the video encoding would take an eternity).

Come May of '09 I should be mainframe certified and (hopefully) gainfully employed, with an apartment and utilites/bills/taxes/etc to pay on my own... in the current economy.....  Having a liquid cooled beast of a server that acts like a starved electricity vampire seems less and less glamorous. And I've been reconsidering the neccesity of dual booting to Windows as well - all the games I was planning on playing are either Mac supported (my main computer of choice) or coming to the Xbox360. Even if I absolutely need a windows program I can always use VirtualBox to create a VM.

So I've been looking at little pc's like these:
They're a bit more powerful than an SNES (actually comparable to a somewhat midrange desktop I think) but they are quieter, easier to stash in a smal apartment, and have a cheaper cost of operation than my current Hohenheim.

So, thats what I've been thinking about. It's still almost a year off from happening (you know, getting a job that comes with an income has to come first and all) but I just thought I could use a second post and this didn't seem like that bad of an idea.