Spec Check

[Kalsius]

Hi all!!

For my sins I've been away from putting comps together for too long and with the desire to digitise my music, film and tv collections I need space, and lots of it!!

I have looked at the various Qnap, Buffalo and also a home built Chenbro system but the limitations on expandability above 3TB in RAID5 left a nagging feeling, I've already filled a temp 500GB RAID1 and I've hardly made a dent in my DVD collection, don't even get me started on the HD storage!!

So I figured I'd invest in some future upgradeability and give myself room for expansion, any suggestions on the build are much appreciated.

P.S, I will also be waiting with eagerness for the 1.5TB drives which are supposedly gonna hit this week sometime so there's no rush on when I need to put the order in.

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £22.99(£27.01)
Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7200S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM £13.99(£16.44)
Thermaltake VA8003SWA Aluminium Armour Super Tower - Silver£101.99(£119.84)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) *4 £307.96(£361.84)
Icy Dock MB-455SPF 5-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure£64.99(£76.36)
AMCC 3Ware 9550SXU-12ML PCI-X 12-Port SATA-II RAID Controller£352.99(£414.76)
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H AMD 740G (AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard£36.99(£43.46)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail£32.99(£38.76)
Akasa Serial ATA 45cm DAYGLO Blue Data Cable *4 £11.96(£14.04)
Maxtor Diamondmax 20 80GB SATA-II 2MB Cache - OEM (STM380215AS)£20.99(£24.66)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66G-02141)£47.99(£56.39)
Zalman ZM500-HP Heatpipe Cooled 500W Modular PSU£55.99(£65.79)

Total : £1,276.95

 

[semi-pro waster]

Is there any particular reason why you want AMD? If not there is a good chance you'll be recommended Intel for the overclockability - for a simple server it hardly makes a difference though.

You probably want to check that the motherboard supports PCI-X as I think it is only server motherboards that do so that adds about £100 to your budget right there.

Any reason for Vista Basic? Home Premium isn't that much more expensive but is a lot prettier and more capable.

 

[Kalsius]

Thanks waster, I will be dropping the 3ware card in favour of a PCI-E card so the CPU and mobo should be fine. The AMD was just sentimentality, I've a lot of AMD and as you say, there's little difference when I'm not planning on overclocking.

Vista basic is just there as there is little needed to run this, it'll be headless and just running bog standard apps like iTunes with some other service based stuff so it doesn't need to be pretty or do anything fancy.

Thanks again for the feedback.