You can buy cheap servers (8GB ram, 2x3.2GHz processor, etc) for around $150-200.
A similar computer would cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Why would I not want to just buy a server and use that as a tower?
63 Answers
Those are used servers, and you could use those. But you could also just buy a cheap used PC.
Also note, those specs tell you very little.
Some things to consider:
Are there 2 Pentium era 3,2GHz Xeons? Or are they Itanium (Useless for desktop computing).
Is the Power Supply included? Does it need 2 power supplies or else beep constantly that a power supply has failed?
What RAM is it? EEC? EEC is slower than regular desktop RAM.
Will you be able to find the correct RAID driver easily for a desktop OS?
Whats shape is the hard drive in?
If its been on for 2-5 years or more in an enterprise 24/7 you can expect the PSU, motherboard and hard drives to be near the end of their life.
There is a good chance there will be no graphics capabilities.
Some operating system licenses allow multiple logical processors (dual, quad core etc.) but only a single physical processor.
Space, depending on the server it could be hard to fit it somewhere. Is it a 1u, 2u, 4u? How would you mount a rack server at home?
5I once had a server tower (SuperMicro) and have used a rackmount server as a standalone machine. In both cases the fans in them were LOUD! You could one several rooms away, even though the (admittedly not real solid) doors were closed. If you were in an apartment, these would be serious complaint-drawers from your neighbors.
As you said, a server is a "big" computer. Do you really want to have a slab of metal that's half the size of an adult as your PC? Where are you going to put it?
Noise issues would certainly be a problem too, which would ruin your gaming and/or datacenter-theater experience.
The reason these things are so cheap is because they're obsolete compared to modern server offerings. You can get a new server with dual Ivy Bridge Xeons with 16 cores at nearly 3GHz, over 100GB of RAM, and easily over a TB of storage, to give a typical example. Keep in mind, these $200 servers are probably Dell 1950/2950s or HP Gen5s. These are Core 2-era machines. Certainly not bad for the time (considering 3.2GHz processors), but is it REALLY going to provide you that much horsepower for gaming in today's titles compared to a budget system nowadays?
Check out Tom's Hardware quarterly System Builder Marathon, where you can build your own ~$600 gaming PC using brand-new parts. This is a much better use of your money, not to mention the energy required for lugging your new purchase up the stairs.
