First build - Home Server

[Mike1983]

Hi all

I have now completed my first full build, a home server for media streaming, general data storage and FTP purposes.

It's nothing special but I've asked for help along the way and people asked for me to post pictures / details so here they are.

The spec is as follows

YOUR BASKET
4 x Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD30EFRX - OEM £149.99 (£599.96)
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x Seasonic G series 550w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £76.99
1 x Intel Pentium G2120 3.10GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £73.99
1 x Cooler Master Silencio 550 Silent Tower Case - Black £69.98
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £41.99
1 x Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 64Bit (1 Server & 10 Client Licenses) - OEM (CCQ-00128) £39.98
1 x Xigmatek Loki SD963 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1) £14.99
Total : £1,080.86 (includes shipping : FREE).



I purchased it when there was a Christmas / New Year 5% off offer on at the time and most parts were on individual offer (including a good price on the 3 TB WD reds). In addition to this, I've got £27.20 tracked Quidco cashback which brings the total to £879.52 (so a saving of £200 compared to todays price!)

Building the computer has been great, I've learned a lot and had a good time doing so, will definitely self build in the future.

The case is very quiet, I can barely hear things running on the inside. The rear fan is the loudest thing in there which I may change for a better one but it isn't really necessary.

I'm currently in the process of figuring out how to set up the drives, RAID, native WHS features or an aftermarket solution. Initial tests show that transfer speeds from another computer to the server provide an approx 85 MB/s transfer speed (copying a 4GB file from a desktop to this server). I am pleased with this as I was used to 20-30 MB/s and was told to not expect much more than around 50.

In addition to the above, I ran SuperPi on it last night and got a faster cycle to 1M than I do on my Q6600, I really ddn't expect that!

Pics below

Any comments? Have I installed the cooler the right way round? I think I should have installed it with the fan against the RAM?

Mike

 

[Mike1983]

I suspected so, will change the fan around tonight thanks.

I was originally thinking about RAID 10.... then I went off RAID and started looking into drive mirroring in Windows Home Server.... now I'm looking at using a program called "Drive Bender". Still got a bit of research to do and will be posting in the server forum to get their feedback.

What's putting me off RAID and convincing me to go with Drive Bender is that I could take out any drive running in a Drive Bender installation and place it in another computer and it will read fine, just like any other hard disk. I wouldn't be able to do that (so easily) with a disk that has been part of a RAID installation.

Additionally, RAID covers the entire HDDs, Drive Bender allows you to select down to folder level which data is to be mirrored elsewhere thus making great efficiencies int he space you have available, especially if there's a mixture of non-critical and critical data in your pool.

Mike