lammert - 3:21 am on Apr 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

Without knowing your application and your database activity it is difficult to decide. But in general, more RAM will reduce disk access and speed things up with lower disk wear. So independent of your server choice, I would increase the RAM size because 512MB is low end.

Furthermore, IDE disks for servers are hardly sold nowadays. So your second option is probably not a new server, but a server of a few years old with a higher chance to crash in the coming years.

How are the drives partitioned? Proper partitioning to separate program and dataspace and a cluster size matching your database datablock size also improves performance.

Which OS/distribution is running on these servers? Are they well maintained or do you need to upgrade every six months?

What types of systemboards are in it? Genuine Intel or another A-brand, or some B-brand that has the same specs on paper but a lower reliability?

You see, more questions than answers but chosing the right server for a specific application is much more than just naming a processor, RAM size/speed and disk size.