hey, im new here, been building PC's for a while and now im looking into a business venture that includes a website that will be pushing some serious media. the website has profiles, live chat, videos, music, pictures and people can also add their own content such as videos, pictures and such.

my major question is, what do u guys think would be be best way to go hardware wise? i've been reading but i cant seem to find the info im lookin for. especially since there is so much media on the site im wondering what part of the server would be the key to this whole operation. would it be memory, or the processor. i kno bandwidth and storage issa must, but im not too sure i NEED a serious high end processor to run this site. my business associate says he thinks we do. so im askin around for some advice.

help...lol

o...and im not totally against buyin a prebuilt server. i was even told about using mac pros with leopard server....just some extra info

i would really urge you not to apple products for server application, its a server it doesnt matter what the desktop looks like, or how pretty the case is, what is immportant is upgradeability.

you are right you dont really need ultimate processing power, however i would recommend a sever grade quad processor. but it doesnt have to be top of the line.
Intel Xeon E5405P (2.0ghz)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=753000
^this may do but you wont go wrong with going with higer specs.

where you want to spend your money is on storage, you need a good array, i dont know whether you want a separate server for storage, but i'll assume you dont.

so if i where you i would use a raid 5 array with some a 750gb or 1tb HDD.
i dont think scsi will help you much, atlhough you could certainly look into it.

1000 GB Western Digital green power
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=664847
something like this will be good, get 4 and put them in raid. i am a fan of western digital's green power, becasue it wont suck power to much, and is fast and reliable.

now i would inist that you get a independant (of motherbaord) raid controller, motherbaord or (shivers) software raid jsut wont hack it.
somethging like this:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=258223
althoguh i would prefer to see a 'bigger' name for relaiblity.

you dont need any specialised graphics, so dont waste any money there, on board is more than fine.

for ram would go for 4gb (in 2*2 to allow for upgrade)

unfortchantly motherbaords are expensive for Server, the 771 genrealy are a dual socket affair. but they are quality MB's
Supermicro X7DVL-E i5000V:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=463686
Please note that Asus and Gigibyte are not the king of motherbaords in ther server space.

Now i would recommend that you choose the case wisely, i would strongly recommend a proper rack-mountable cases, with a good power supply.

i dont know what OS you intend to use, but i would reccomend Windows server 2008 (x64) becasue it support ASPx and ASP, with IIS. however linux server editions are also good choices.

BTW: if you build it yourself you'll proberly have a better cahnce of fixing any problems wiht it, if you let someone else do it you dont.

hope this help you