Right, I was about to post an option involving 8gig of RAM and a cheap AMD solution. However, it seems that whilst 4gig has gotten a fair bit cheaper lately, getting 2x 4Gig modules is still crazy money. So, I think this is the cheapest you can go for some performance is.....

Mobo £80
4gig £70
Quad core CPU £150

£300 bang on. It's the best you can get for low money. That CPU will overclock to 4Ghz+ if you put a decent cooler on it. For a super cheap case I would look at:
This at £40 it has 3 fan mounts rather than just front and back and that will be crucial for decent cooling.
If you REALLY can't stretch: Clicky at £30 I've built in this and it's alright, but the cooling isn't sufficient for future hardware or serious overclocking.

Ideally, THE cheap case to have is the Antec 300 at £45

Can you stretch to that?

He will need a GPU with that motherboard, will the i3 quad combo I stuck on the first page not be good enough?

It's only £30 cheaper and loses two cores. The boys are right, two cores aren't really enough for this kind of thing. I'm assuming he already has a GPU, because it's not mentioned in the OP.

Nob I though the i3 was quad.... DOH

sorry chaps

Thanks for the input guys - that spec looks interesting okenobi.

Someone has offered me a Core 2 Quad Q8400 (2.66), with a freezer7 and 4GB of OCZ ram (DDR2 I think, not sure of the speed) for £125 which I am going to buy at the weekend.

That leaves me needing a socket 775 board. The Asrock P43DE is £52, supports upto 16GB memory in 4 slots (leaving me 2 free) and has got 6 SATA ports.

Unfortunately it doesn't have onboard graphics, and the NIC isn't supported in xen/vmware so I'll have to buy an Intel NIC and a graphics card - I might have a scout around eBay for a really old cheap one.

The Antec 300 case looks really cool - and it has got 6 HDD bays, which is great.

So that makes:

Q8400 + 4GB RAM: £125
Motherboard: £51.38
NIC: £21.99
Case: £49.99
GPU: £30

Total: £278.36 (I might be able to reduce it by shopping around)

I've got a HDD and PSU so that'll get me going for now. In time I'll buy one HDD for each VM, and probably up the memory.

What do you think of that system?

There ya go! Good buy.

I'd go with this mobo though.

The P5Q stuff was always top notch.

I bought a couple of those nic's from ebay for £8 each (more or less)

This is a smart alternative case I brought when I built my spare PC - Compucase 6BRB Black Mid Tower Case £39.39

Comes with front and rear fans already, quick release and all that and compared to the 300 (which I use for my main PC) it's not far behind. So if you’re trying to save money it's worth a look imo.

That looks pretty good, Rich.
Is there enough room in the roof for a double radiator, or would it foul the rear exhaust fan?

Yeah that case does look good - and the eSATA is a bonus.

Am I right in thinking it only has 4 HDD bays though? What are the two between the 5.25" and 3.5" for? Surely not for floppy drives?

If they're additional 3.5" bays then it'll be ideal. I like the styling too - it's very similar to that Antec case although I think the Antec does look better because the front panel isn't interrupted by the front of those bays between the 5.25" and 3.5"

Floppy drives are 3.5" anyway, so you can use them for extra HDDs.
Plus, you can always fit 3.5" adapters in the spare 5.25" bays.

I though it was a nice case when I received it hense me mentioning it, Spreadie not sure it has the room for a rad in the top. When the grill is removed the cut out is approx 125 x 260 x 30mm, as you can see from the pics really only any good for a couple of 120 fans but I'm no expert on liquid cooling.

ESXi more than likely won't support the esata. Remember you're building a server not a desktop PC. It's not really got anything you can see on the screen you can see so a box you can tuck away somewhere is best.

Cheers for the pics.

Wouldn't take much modding to fit a roof rad.

[/thread-jack]

I did wonder that when the case arrived and I lifted the top section off to have a look.....