My company has a relatively small DB ~10GB that grows maybe 200MB a year. We rarely have more than 4-5 concurrent connections and out of that never more than 2-3 intensive queries at a time. All the documentation for processors, drives, memory, etc..., seems to be geared toward huge datacenter loads hundreds, if not thousands, of times larger.
Is it really worth struggling over purchasing a dual e5-2650 v3 versus a less expensive 2620 v3 or an intel dc3700 versus a somewhat cheaper Samsung or other? Is a dedicated RAID controller really worth buying rather than using the new Intel Software Raid tech?
Currently, we have a dual e5-2640 setup with 32GB and things are running smoothly. However, we need a new backup server that may end up reversing roles with our current production server if it's significantly faster.