This article explains what the requirements are for the computer you will be using for a personal file or web server.

This is going to vary a lot depending on different variables:

• What are you using the server for?
  
  • A personal HTTP server
  • A LAN file server
  • A publicly accessible web server
  • An intranet server
  • A FTP server
• What operating system are you going to be using on it?
  
  • Linux
    
    • Ubuntu
    • Xubuntu
    • Fedora
  • Windows
    
    • XP
    • Vista
    • Server 2003/2008

* I focus mainly on using Ubuntu, so my references are made to using the Linux Ubuntu distro.

System Requirements

Ubuntu 9.04 - Desktop Edition

• As far as the CPU requirements are concerned, I couldn't find anything on that on the Ubuntu Website.
• At least 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM
• At least 4 gigabytes (GB) of available disk space

It does mention the minimum requirement is 256MB RAM and 4GB disk space for installation.

Windows XP

• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available disk space

Recommended:
These are recommendations I've personally come up with based on the experiences I've had:

• Pentium 4/Celeron 2-gigahertz (Ghz) processor or faster (Or AMD equivalent)
• At least 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM
• At least 10 gigabytes (GB) of available disk space

(These are based on my usage and operating an Apache HTTP server with MySQL/PHP support)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

I highly recommend finding a computer you can dedicate as a "server-only" computer if you're doing more than just experimenting with it.  If it'll be used as a public server, then you should definitely not use your everyday-use computer as your server.

I'm personally using a Dell Dimension 3000, which at the time of writing this, is about 4-5 years old.  It has a P4 2.8Ghz CPU and 2 GB RAM in it.  ( I upgraded it from the default 1GB)

So basically what was a pretty decent PC about 4-5 years ago and newer should work just fine.  Older PCs may work as well, but slower CPUs and less than 1GB of RAM may hurt the performance of your personal web server.
The best way to find out is give it a try and see how it runs.  HTTP servers are relatively low-demand servers, so they will do fine on slower PCs.  File servers, Media servers, etc. will be more demanding, especially if multiple users are accessing it at the same time.

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