Like many SharePointers, I always seem to have an external USB drive hanging off my laptop.  Sure, I have access to a bigger fancier server if needed but for daily tasks I needed a nicer playground.  I decided to finally bite the bullet and get me a nice little server where I can run all of my VMs – and to my surprise the total came out to less than $700!

Here’s the high points:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz Triple-Core Black Processor

RAM: 2 x 4GB = 8GB (motherboard supports up to 16GB)

Storage: 2 x 640GB Western Digital Caviar

Case: Antec Sonata III

Here’s the receipt:

So before anyone blasts me and says “that isn’t less than $700” – you are correct.  However, there was a promotional code for the case that dropped the price $20 that didn’t get applied, but the fine folks at New Egg have credited it back.  In addition, there’s a $10 rebate on the motherboard.  When all is said and done that means the final shipped price will be $686.54.  Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Is it the greatest machine ever built?  No way!  But it will have enough horsepower to allow me to run 3-4 VMs at a time and add more RAM in the future to run even more.  Overall, I was pretty proud of the bang for the buck.  And they threw in a free label maker – SCORE!

A quick shout out to the good folks over at AnandTech.  Their frequently updated System Buyer’s Guides are a great resource to anyone looking to put together a system who doesn’t want to spend a ton of extra time matching up components and reading reviews.