What's important for a server

On a LAN, not a web server

[MatthewHSE]

I'm looking into a new server for the LAN in our home office. We have seven computers on a gigabit network. Usually, only four computers will be used at the same time. I want to get the best network performance possible, so I was wondering: in a server like this, is the CPU, RAM, or hard drive speed the biggest factor for accessing data across the network?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Matthew

[mjwalshe]

well it depends on what your server has to do having a proper server class nic that offloads some of the overhead from the server.

pure lan performance is down to the quality of your switch (i asume you using a consumer grade gig switch) and physical plant (ie the wires)

going to cut through or fragment free as oposed to store and forward will help reduce latency.

if you repeatedly transfer very large files from multiple pc's to and from the server at the same time id say you servers disk might be a bottle neck.

but a lot of pc aps would struggle to saturate a gigabit link