Thinking about building a WHS - what hardware?

stuartmanton

stuartmanton

stuartmanton

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I have been toying with the idea of getting either a NAS or building a WHS.

I think I have decided on a WHS. I have a MSDN subscription so the OS license isn't an issue.

I need some advice on a suitable case, M/B, CPU, PSU etc. I don't want the case to be too big but must be large enough for 2 or 3 3.5" disks. Keeping the noise down is also a priority as well as the cost.

I was looking at the Antec P180 as a potential for a case.

Thanks for any advice
 
I would get the cheapest case possible!
Personally, I bought a B-Grade SLI mobo as I didnt need accessories and wasnt bothered about a backplate. Since it has 2 PCI-E x16 slots it meant a graphics card and an 8-port raid card (Although don't use raid) could be used at the same time.
You could also plump for a mobo with onboard graphics but at the time I was building on a budget and B-Grade was much cheaper (Board was £22 IIRC).
As far as the PSU goes, I would buy a low power energy efficient one, I have an Antec Earthwatts 380W in mine and it works a charm.
Keep processor power to a minimum, you don't even need a multi-core since WHS will run on pretty much anything. Its a shame you don;t have access to the Members Market as you could have had some great deals!
 
Spent far too long last night on the internet looking into this and going around in circles.

I think I may go with the following

Chenbro mini-ITX server case - ES30068
Intel D510MO Intel Atom M/B + a PCI SATA card to give me an eSata port

I already have some compatiable memory and 2 x 1TB disks which can go in.

I was initially considering the CFI A9849 case as this has space for 3 disks, but I am not sure about the efficiency/noise of the PSU and I couldn't find too much about it.
 
What PhillyDee was try to tell you was.... that for a WHS you don't have to go all fancy

A cheap case, low power CPU (it's going to be on 24/7?) and el cheapo ish MB are the main bits ya need. The 2x 1TB HDD's you already have are great for data storage.

The parts you have sourced so far are great, don't get me wrong, but for a box that essentially is going to be stuck in a corner (headless) and forgotten once set up does not need to be a excercise in latest design concepts.

ATB :)
 
As this is primarily a file store/media/backup server Windows server 2008R2 just seemed like overkill. I did consider this initially as I thought having some of the extras I would get may be of use down the road, but decided that I probably won't use them and I was losing sight of what I really needed.

I understand that it is possible to build a good WHS machine which cheap parts. That is one of the reasons I have been going around in circles. Do you have any recommendations? Low noise and low power consumption are definitely top of my requirements. I would be grateful for any suggestions on suitable parts?
 
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Whatever you can get cheap! It must be compatible with your RAM, so choose a board suitable. Buy a low power CPU as cheap as you can. A small PSU is great. Cheapest case you can. . . . . What sort of cash are you looking at?

And is there any need for eSATA? Its not as if you will be removing drives all the time . . . . And WHS doesn;t like you doing that if its part of the pool since the files are only accessible through the OS and nothing else.
 
Thanks for all your comments

In the end I opted for: -

Antec Mini P180 Case
Corsair 400W CX PSU 80+ PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H mATX M/B
AMD Sempron 140 2.7GHz CPU (haven't tried to enable the second core yet though)

2Gb of memory and 2x1Tb Samsung EcoGreen Hard Drives I already had kicking around.

My thoughts: The case is perfect for my needs, plenty of space for hard drives yet still remaining compact. The hard drivers cages pull out and the drives themselves are mounted in rubber gromments to help reduce noise.

When on the machine is silent.

The installation of WHS was painless and it wasn't long before I had backed up all my machines and moved most of my data to the server. Looking forward to finding some time to take a look at some of the Add ins.
 
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