Goign to be building another server, other than a few "cool" tricks we are going to pull and can't announce just yet this is what the server specs are going to look like. Looking for comments/advice.

Pentium 3.0E.
800MHz FSB with 1MB L2 cache and HyperThreading
2GB of PC3220 DDR RAM (2x1GB sticks)
74GB WD Raptor SATA Hard Drive (10k RPM)

Looks like with the 1U chassis that comes with 2 bays for hotswapping SATA drives and has 2 front USB ports and shipping the grand total will be just over a grand. Building it myself and buying the parts from Newegg (http://www.newegg.com)

Please note that I have the worlds biggest addiction to Newegg and in the past couple years have spent more than 10 grand on Newegg.com alone.

Anyone? Just looking for opinions on the above price estimate and looking to see if anyone thinks that's too expensive or a good deal, or if I could find something similar elsewhere. This will be the first machine we're going to be building ourselves - everything else has been dedicated options provided by the datacenter.

Before I can give an honest answer I have to know what is the server going to be used for? I can tell you that for critical things I don't like SATA drives, they just don't have a long enough history (reliability). Call me old fashioned but I like HW RAID and SCSI. Although I have started using some of the STORCASE Infostations with SATA drives and the Promise V-Trak again with SATA drives. But those are configured with hot-spares and in under a year I have already "blown" a few drives (and some of those were raptors).

That just sounds like bad administration to me. Although I wont say I'm the greatest fan of SATA either.
The machine looks ok and it is at a competitive price. Go for it!
~Equinox

Goin' for a SATA setup because the chassis we chose is SATA hot swappable - I've not had bad experiences with SATA to date...but I've only delt with a handful of 'em.

I have not really had any bad experiances per se, just not enough experience to fully trust SATA yet. Especially in a single drive configuration like you discribe, not that I would be that much more comfortable with a single SCSI drive if that box is critical.
In the cases where I have had SATA drives fail the hot-spares did their job, and other than the performance hit of rebuilding the array things went on normally.

What does?

You setup looks good. Almost the same as 2 of my servers but without the raptors. Just wondering where do you plan on putting this server? Will it be used for basic web hosting content. Atleast give us a hint hehe

The datacenter for this project hasn't been chosen yet - and it will have many features - web hosting might be a feature

I would say that looks like a decent price, but I would say to not go with newegg, as they have become popular and thus raised their prices alittle bit. But I am assuming I would be able to do around $900-$950 for the same server at other smaller sources.

I go with Newegg because I like the customer service they provide, the way they're there when I need them. I'd rather pay a couple extra bucks and know my parts will arrive in 3 business days than save $3 and hope for a 1 week turn around.

True, customer service is a good reason to stay with a company, but watch out... companies tend to forget the little folk when they get big. :&)

Newegg is big, they were big when I bought my first PC from them and got free FedEx shipping on all the items. I just love the egg, it's so convienant and well detailed/oragnized.

Athlon is much better. It's more than a matter of preference.