Servers, SAS, SATA and memory pricing

Since the server hasn't really got off the ground yet, I've found myself daydreaming about its replacement already. The hardware intended for it is kinda old (P4 3GHz and 'only' 4GB RAM) so I was looking... and was astonished to see that it would make all kinds of sense for me to scrap the DDR2 board I was looking at using and go straight to DDR3.
DDR2: €25 or so for 2GB and €45 for 4. DDR3? €20 for 4GB. Huh? That's pretty extreme.

Then again, the controller I'm using to get lots and lots of SATA ports - motherboards with more than six ports are rare - is a PCI-X one so to get the full value I'd need to replace that. Which then automatically means a new board and they tend to come with PCIe. . At least Intel and Supermicro have internal JBOD controllers with 8 ports in the €100 or so class.

Only fly in the ointment? None, really, except I find myself wanting an Intel S1200KP with 16GB and a PCIe x8 RAID card for 14 SATA ports. But that's also going to run a rather large amount of money. So, for the moment, the server's going to have to "make do" with 4GB. It is probably going to run Ubuntu as of now, as I want a Samba server running with its own domain. Might be a bad idea (may well be) but I don't want to run Win2k3 as I figure that will be even more resource intensive. Let's see. Performance isn't too important right now.
The HTPC board - P5QL Pro - will also get 8GB as and when, probably in two chunks. 6GB now and then later to 8, unless it also gets replaced (which I can't quite see, but hey). That case also needs building, and I will have to get on with that this weekend.

- Bret