HP have released its first tower server aimed at small and medium businesses. HP's ProLiant ML115 server uses an AM2 socket and can support Athlon and Opteron 1000 series processors that are designed for single-socket motherboards.

It can use the single-core Athlon 64 3500+ processor running at 2.2 GHz or the dual-core Opteron 1000s running at from 1.8 GHz to 2.8 GHz. The Athlon option is to push the price down to $499 for the entry level version and is a lot cheaper than any rival, such as Gateway has come up with.

The ML115 has 512 MB of DDR2 main memory which is expandable to 8 GB and controls up to four SATA or SAS disk drives.

HP is hoping that these sorts of machines will get SMEs buying servers rather than desktops.

More here.