Cheap server set up

there's a place in my town that is a recycling point for computers, they 'refurbish' them but they are pretty hit and miss, you can easily buy something from them and it stops working pretty quickly. And because they list it as refurbished they don't really offer warranty not that you'd really want them tinkering around in it :p I had them build me a computer a few years ago and had nothing but trouble with it and had terrible customer service, i guy a know looked it over for me and worked fine from then on, so that options out lol There's two Apple stores a few friends of mine live one being privately owned selling refurbished Apple products which you can try before you buy. It was originally where i got the idea for the mac mini as a hub/server until i was told it's bad for servers. I'd to start off cheap but would be prepared to go up to a thousand if it means getting a good server that lasts a long time. Going through my local store that way will only end badly :p So all considered would you recommend me buying a shell, something with the basics such as case, motherboard, power supply, disc drives etc then beef up the processor, memory, hard drive etc? Would mixing SSD and normal hard drives be a good thing, say keeping the OS and software on a SSD and stored data files on the hard drive, would that mean the important systems would run faster? Because the Apple store may have refurbished servers which leads me onto the second point, better to build a Windows server or Apple? I haven't used Ubuntu since it was still labelled purely as Linux, so would be pretty new to me and my friends who would be using it as well.

Aye SATA drives would be cheaper and larger, was just thinking one SDD purely for the OS and some software, with back up files, music, videos and any storage needed for games etc being put onto hard drives. I'm looking for it to be a multi-purpose, i'm buying a new 3D tv soon and so thought i could use my 32inch LCD as a monitor for the server. It'll a badass setup in our living room, the 3D being used to watch tv, watching 3D blu rays, playing console games etc. The 32inch next to it with the server hooked into it will be for guests to internet browse, play music & films through it. It'll then store any video's i'll make and as holding anything i need for hosting a building a Minecraft server. This should mean getting more out the machine, being able to use it as a multi-media centre as well as storage as support for video editing and server hosting. I'll be sharing it with my flat mate and any friends needing to store data, so i expect between the two of us i'll need a terabyte SATA but would like an SDD alongside it purely for the OS if that works well. How much of my budget should i set aside for memory & processing speed to make sure it run's smooth? Can you recommend a good site for buying parts that ships to the UK?

Then by all means use SSD for the OS. I was thinking over all that you wanted to use SSD for everything. You know how it goes when your chatting and go off the deep end on things. SSD if you are just using the OS. And the Sata as a secondary drive in it just make sure when you have it set up that when you get both drives formatted. I think like with windows 2003 server it'll format the drive you want as the C drive first. Then once everything is set up and the drivers are installed in. The Sata drive you can set up as the next driva available for it. And format that. Make sure when your backing up the data that you set it to the Sata drive and not the SSD drive. I know sometimes it will go to the main drive first for the server itself. Just to bring it up as a lil note there. It happened to me on several occations i was using a smaller hard drive as a c drive where the OS was located and totally forgot that there was a larger one in the machine itself for storage and backups.