Server specs/recommendations?

Hi guys.
I've been running a casual minecraft server for me and my buddies on and off for a while now, but now I want to set up a dedicated machine as running a server and the game on one machine sucks ass.

I plan to build my own box as I have experience w/ it. It'll run ubuntu server edition + craftbukkit ofc.
What kind of specs would you guys recommend for a 24/7 20-30 player server?
Looking to keep price and more importantly energy usage as low as possible.

Thanks in advance!

 

dont take my word for it, but judging from what other people have said probably about 1-2gb ram. If you get pc without an os that will cut the cost dramatically too

 

It doesn't need to be much, but I'd get a system with 4 GB ram, and a decent, somewhat new processor. Your Max RAM will depend on how much RAM you want to allocate to the java process, or if you want to run the world in a ramdisk (if not, you need fast HD's). You could probably get away with a 3 GB java process, and a 256 MB ramdisk (for a while anyway).

 

I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. I did a lot of looking on ebay and finding one with DDR2 is a bit tricky. I ended up getting a PowerEdge 1850, has DDR2 off ebay for 139$ , then i ordered a KVM switch (awesome, get one) and i got an extra 4gb's of ram to add to the server making it 8 gb's. All together i spent 332$ combined ebay and newegg purchases.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350430204861

Should arrive Tues-Wed!!! I cant wait!!

 

Quad core, with triple channel DDR3 memory, 3 x 2GB. 2 x 250-500GB SATA in software RAID 0. Ubuntu would run great.