Hello Soulwatcher,

Welcome to my world! I build 1U rackmount servers and will not touch a Dell with a 10 foot pole. Everything that has been mentioned here is true and also keep in mind that there can and will be a need to improvise when building a custom 1u server. Good choice on going with the Athlon 64 for your server, you should not run into cooling problems with that processor. You definitely will need to leave the i/o plate off the back of the server because it will not match up properly for your board's configuration. If you need help with any 1u builds in the future, let me know.