All-In-One motherboards tend to be something either you love or hate (personally, I love them). One thing I have found to be the case though, is they make for a great foundation on home servers.

For example, I have a home server running on a Biostar all-in-one motherboard with a Celeron 1.3 Ghz processor and 512 MB RAM. The machine has a RAID 3 card installed for redundant storage and runs Windows 2000 like a rock. This server houses all of our music and movies through a couple of shares.

One great benefit to using an older motherboard is the power requirements are typically a lot less than newer machines, which means the machine will not produce as much heat. On our server, I have it configured to automatically start up in the morning as well as automatically shut down at night so it doesn’t consume power while we are sleeping at night.

Anyhow, the point being if you are looking to build your own home server, give a good look at all-in-ones as they are typically abundant and cheap. On top of that, going with a second or third generation motherboard (look on eBay), could really make the cost appealing.