Koenrad, If you really expect to use this 4 to 5 years, then going 64-bit makes sense. The boards are under 200 US$ an the chips are around 200 US$ - i.e. it will cost you about 200 US$ extra to go 64bit. All the other costs (memory and hard drive) are the same. Do the Opteron only if it is a pure server load - its clock speed is lower, but its got better memory management as I understand it. Otherwise, save the 200 US$ and get a 32bit Athlon/P4 and a compatible motherboard. I agree with Jerry's post - to not do RAID1 these days is insanity on a file server. - Richard -----Original Message----- From: Koenraad Lelong [mailto:k.lelong@ace-electronics.be] Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 11:18 PM To: Suse mailing list Subject: [SLE] Why should I buy 64bit hardware ? I would like to build my own machine, which is going to serve mail (Postfix, Courier-Imap), web (maybe), files (Samba), proxy (Squid), for my home-network. I hope to have it running for the next 4 to 5 years, if the hardware allows. Since SuSE 9.1 will include 64bit software I'm considering to make the new machine 64bit. Any reason to go (or not) to AMD Athlon64 (or Opteron) ? Comments invited. TIA -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong R&D Manager ACE electronics n.v. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com