Recently I've been getting asked two questions.
"Why do you have a server in your home?"

"What's the system specifications of your server?"
To answer the "why", it should be fairly obvious. I'm a software developer. Now you can be a coder and not have a server. In fact, when I first started off I did everything on a single PC.
The problem is with everything installed on one machine, it was tricky to get all my games, apps and dev tools loaded without creating clashes. For example, Visual Studio (VS) 6 could not be installed with the game "Painkiller" installed because the developers published the first version with debugging enabled. Meaning while playing the game, at certain points VS would fire up to handle statements sent from the game to the debugger. Back then memory was at a premium and this usually resulted in the machine blue screening.
For a short time I worked with removable drives, booting into the system after inserting the needed hard drive.
Then virtualisation arrived and I tried that. Starting off with VirtualPC (Windows XP), then VirtualBox, then VMWare and finally settling on Hyper-V. All running locally on my machine.
Once I moved to Hyper-V, having a server just made sense. Plus, my wife and I had started a huge image repository on a portable drive. Having a server would mean I could store all those images on a file share instead of plugging in a USB drive.
So I built a server. Which was simply a hand me down from myself. The old gaming rig.
But 5 years ago I stopped doing that and focused on my gaming rig and server separately. You'll see why in a moment.
The second question...easy...here we go...
Case
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Antec One Hundred
Dimensions (mm): 197.5 x 477 x 480.5 (W x D x H) Material: Steel, plastic Available colours: Black Front panel: Power switch, 4x USB 3, stereo, microphone Drive bays: 3x external 5.25in drive bays, 1x external 3.5in drive bays, 6x internal 3.5in drive bays Form factor(s): ATXe, ATX, micro-ATX, mini-ITX Cooling: 1x 140mm roof fan mount (1 x 140mm fan supplied), 1x 120mm rear fan mount (1x 120mm fan supplied), 1x 120mm side fan mount (not supplied), 2x 120mm front fan mount CPU cooler clearance: 160mm Graphics card dimensions supported: 295mm long Extras: Dust Filters, adjustable fan speeds
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Power Supply
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EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G3
80 Plus Gold 1000W Fully Modular Eco Mode with New HDB Fan 10 Year Warranty Includes Power ON Self Tester Compact 150mm Size Power Supply 220-G3-1000-X1
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Motherboard
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Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3
Supports newest AMD AM3+ FX/AM3 Phenom™ II series processors Advanced 8+2 phase CPU VRM power design for AMD high-TDP CPU support 2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 interfaces for ultimate graphics performance AMD SB950 provides 6 native SATA3 ports with superfast 6Gbps link speed and RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support Supports USB 3.0 with superfast transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps GIGABYTE 3x USB Power with On/Off Charge USB ports Ultra Durable 3 Classic Technology with copper cooled quality for lower working temperature Turbo XHD technology accelerating hard drive performance with ease Revolution energy saving design with Easy Energy Saver technology Hi-def 108dB Signal-to-noise ratio Blu-ray DVD audio playback Patented DualBIOS with Hybrid EFI technology for 3TB HDD support
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Processor
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AMD FX-9590 8 Core Black Edition
# of CPU Cores: 8 # of Threads: 8 Base Clock: 4.7GHz Max Boost Clock: Up to 5.0GHz Total L1 Cache: 384KB Total L2 Cache: 8MB Total L3 Cache: 8MB Unlocked: Yes CMOS: 32nm SOI Package: AM3+ PCI Express® Version: n/a Default TDP / TDP: 220W Max Temps: 57°C
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Memory
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4 x Hyper Fury Black 8GB 1866Mhz DDR3 CL10 DIMM
Form Factor: UDIMM Pins: 240 XMP Ready: No Plug N Play: Yes Speeds: 1333, 1600, 1866 CAS Latencies: 9, 10, 11 Voltages: 1.35V, 1.5V Module Capacities: 4GB, 8GB Kit Capacities: 8GB, 16GB Kit Configuration: Dual Channel Operating Temperature: 0° C to +85° C
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Processor Cooler
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Antec Mercury 360 RGB Liquid Cooler |
Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
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12 x Toshiba P300 3TB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gbps 7200rpm |
Solid State Drive (SSD)
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1 x Samsung 850 EVO 250Gb
Application: Client PCs FORM FACTOR: 2.5 inch INTERFACE: SATA 6Gb/s (compatible with SATA 3Gb/s & SATA 1.5Gb/s) DIMENSION (WxHxD): 100 X 69.85 X 6.8 (mm) WEIGHT: Max 55.0g STORAGE MEMORY: Samsung V-NAND CONTROLLER: Samsung MGX Controller (120 GB, 250 GB, 500 GB) Samsung MHX Controller ( 1,024 GB, 2,048 GB, 4,096 GB) CACHE MEMORY: 512 MB Low Power DDR3 (250 GB, 500 GB)
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PCIeX16 Expansion
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nVidia GeForce 8400GS Graphics Card
Standard memory : DDR2 The bit width of the memory bus: 64 bit Memory frequency: 400 MHz Memory bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s The amount of memory: 256 MB
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PCIeX1 Slot 2 Expansion
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AverMedia Live Gamer HD C985 video capture card
Interface:PCI-Express x1 / USB (Hot Button) Video Input:HDMI Video Output (Pass-Through):HDMI Audio Input:HDMI / 3-Pole 3.5 mm Jack Audio Output (Pass-Through):HDMI / 3-Pole 3.5 mm Jack Max Pass-Through Resolutions:1080p60 Max Record Resolutions:1080p30 Supported Resolutions (Video input):1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 480p, 480i Record Format:MPEG 4 (H.264+AAC) / Supports hardware encoding
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PCIeX4
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Rivo PCIe SATA Card, 6 Port SATA RAID Controller |
PCI Slot 1 Expansion
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Silicon Image 3114 4 Port SATA RAID Controller |
Over the years, both myself and my wife have installed software for specialised tasks ranging from graphics editing to book libraries to device software. Most of this software was dropped by the vendor or (free) updates not available for current operating systems.
A Hyper-V server allows for virtual machines running this software on the OS it was designed for. Accessible by remote desktop or directly from the server.
As mentioned earlier, a central storage for photo's, music, movies, etc is now possible. Any device on the network can access these, without interfering with my gaming rig.
Obviously, virtual machines are very large and require large storage. With 36TB (OMG! yeah...read the post on this!) of storage there's planty of room to play and store the thousands of images of kittens we seem to collect!
I put in a video capture card in to allow for the recording of content within the virtual machines and it can also take an input from my PC or my wife's. So anything we might need to record is covered.
The server is running Windows Server 2016 Standard at the moment. However it is normally running Hyper-V Server 2016 Core which is free to download and run from the Microsoft Evaluation Center. I bounce back and forth between full blown Server and CORE versions for testing purposes.
Running Hyper-V Core requires a high skill level using PowerShell. However you can offset this with several third party tools. I'll do a separate article on those. At the end of the day, when it's free, you really can't complain! 😋
Bottom line, my server is a tool we've come to rely on. Being both a needed piece of hardware as well as a play thing.
I highly recommend building one!