I used to have a stack of proliants, and I agree with Nick. Prolaint
bios was... Special.
If you really want a low power cpu, get one of those c7 cpus, put it
in an aluminium case, and you don't have to worry about all those
issues that nick and others brought up. If you're worried about this
affecting your wife, the radiation is inverse squared or inverse power
of 4. The C7 is as low power as those PPros you're looking at, or
possibly lower.
Certainly all the other equipment you're going to put in - HD and
power supply are better performing when new - older stuff are prone to
leakage (old caps, etc).
Another thing to consider - you can't look at single components,
you've gotta look at the whole system. Older proliant are not UL
certified for home use - ie, it leaks more EMR. Additionally. The
video, audio and scsi cards all produce EMR. With the C7 (check out
that $60 motherboard that walmart's selling), and a HD, you're done.
If all you're going to need is 300G, just get a 300G HD and you're
done - the whole system only has 3 components putting out EMR -
motherboard, HD, power supply. If you put that in a nice aluminium
case, and then ground that sucker properly, your wife should be happy
with you. Compare that with a heat producing, inefficient proliant,
with old CPUs that use more power (and hence, probably produce more
EMR), with additional components, video card, audio card, one boot
drive, one scsi/raid, one external case, additional (and expensive and
high EMR producing) HD - at 36G, you'll need 10 drives, and the scsi
backplane, I count at least 17 discrete components producing EMR,
including power supply for scsi box.
I just don't see how it can be better for your wife.
And don't forget the noise. Proliants are *LOUD* suckers. Generally
all servers are loud and will interfere with household appliances -
for you, this seems to include your wife, though if you call her a
household appliance, she might not be too happy with you :-)
