What type of dedicated server do I need?

I have my vBulletin forum on a shared host, and am getting a lot of mysql errors "Too many connections", which from research means I should upgrade, so I will be upgrading to a dedicated server.
I have been looking at www.liquidweb.com as they have good reviews at WHT and are fully managed.

My forum has a few mods installed, vbSEO, a few of cyb's etc.
The forum is in its growing stages, has usually 100-200 people browsing, and has peaked at 400 people so far. We get 6-10k people coming through per day. Our Alexa ranking is constantly climbing (or getting lower, whichever way you look at it) so the forums will be expanding.

The question is: Which dedicated server should I get??

Now I know the obvious answer is "Whatever your budget can afford" but my budget is flexible. I would prefer the server to stay around $300, but it could stretch to $500.

I'm not sure if I should focus on getting a more powerful CPU or go for faster hdd's or what.
LiquidWeb servers come with 4GB DDR2 PC5300, and I am wondering if I can go for a lower level Dual Core Xeon, or if I should go for a dual-clovertowns or dual-opertons. Can I stick with SATA drives? Or should I go for SCSI 10k or 15k rpm drives?

Would greatly appreciate some advice before shelling out the cash.

Cheers~

[SEOvB]

If you've got alot of reading/writing going on to the disks i'd go with the SCSI 10k at least

[crucialjames]

Too many connections means the "shared host" has a low limit set in php/mysql maybe ask the shared host to increase the limit to save you aggravation while your seeking alternative routes like dedicated servers.

As FRDS said higher drives are always a plus. I've noticed apache increasing memory usage rather than cpu on larger forums.

[leginag]

The shared host is unable to increase the limit which is why I am looking for a dedicated.

Would I be ok using a single 10k drive? RAID 1 doesn't offer performance gains does it, only redundancy?

[lane]

Originally Posted by leginag

The shared host is unable to increase the limit which is why I am looking for a dedicated.

Would I be ok using a single 10k drive? RAID 1 doesn't offer performance gains does it, only redundancy?

Correct, only redundancy and you can argue also have a performance hit. However, I do not see you needing a dedicated server. A VPS/VDS will do the job with room to spare.

I would check out www.fdcservers.com - Cheap prices on VPS/VDS and it includes cpanel. They are not fully managed however.

For a fully managed VPS, check www.surfspeedy.com - Fully managed and good pricing.

I have used both of them and both are perfectly fine, still with FDC today with a couple dedicated servers. The unmtetered bandwdith is nice.