Server Build: Final

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Firstly, apologies for the long break in posting. I actually built the server on the last week of May, but haven’t had the time to sit down & sift through all the pics I’d taken during the build to prepare this post properly. There weren’t many changes to the components list I’d posted previously by the end, but thanks to another ‘too good to pass up’ deal from Ebuyer I was able to add a superb Crucial M4 64GB solid state drive into the mix. The 64GB is MORE than enough to cope with Windows Home Server & even with a few programs installed already, it still has over 40GB left available.

Anyway, enough rambling! On with the home server build itself!

Components

Okay, lets refresh our memory with the list of components used in the initial build.

Server Components
Server Components Pre-Build

BitFenix Shinobi Case – Black, non-windowed version.
Gigabyte H61MA-DV3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 ’80 Plus’ Power Supply
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel RAM
Crucial 64GB M4 SSD – 2.5″ SATA-III
Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA – 3.5″ SATA-III Hard Drive – 7200RPM 64MB Cache
LG DVD 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
BitFenix Spectre Plain Black 120mm Fan
BitFenix Alchemy PreBraided Molex to 3pin x3 Fan adapter
BitFenix Alchemy PreBraided SATA 6GB/s cable
Windows Home Server 2011 – OEM
(Everything here came from Overclockers with the exception of the hard drive from Ebuyer.)

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Server Build: Components

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These days it can be a bit of a nightmare keeping track of all your media, especially when there’s more than one PC in the home. Right now all of our main media is kept on the other half’s PC, modest enough at 500GB with no back up. I know, I know, no backup – crazy right?! My own media, again 500GB is stored on a 2009 Mac Mini, and some more of it’s on my MacBook, the latter of which IS backed up to an external 500GB WD hard drive. This server is designed to centralise our media storage and give us somewhere to house our other PC’s backups. Thus begins the search for our server build components.

The budget for this project’s very modest, emphasising packing power per £GBP, hehe. The computer itself needs to be ventilated effectively as it’ll be on for long periods, even if the system won’t be pulling a heavy workload. Since it’ll be on more than most of our systems, it also needs to be quiet and draw as little power as possible. After  a lot of deliberation, I’ve chosen the following  components initially:

Server Build Components

Bitfenix Shinobi Case – Black, non-windowed version.
Gigabyte H61MA-DV3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 ’80 Plus’ Power Supply
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel RAM
Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5″ SATA-III Hard Drive – 7200RPM 64MB Cache
LG DVD 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter

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Future Projects

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Right now I have a few projects I’d like to complete some day, the first of which is a fairly low-mid range PC offering hefty storage. Currently, John and I watch most of our media via a Playstation 3 console hooked up to our livingroom TV. It’s worked well for us so far, but now it’s becoming annoying trying to keep track of where we’re pulling our media from on our home network. Too many times we’ve sat down to get all comfy on the sofa and kick-started the PC to find that we’ve forgotten to boot up the relevant PC to stream our media from!

Before moving in together, I kept all my media on a Mac Mini which streamed to my own PS3 for viewing. Back at the flat, he had a PC hooked straight up to his TV & watched everything directly from there, avoiding any reliance on a home network. Recently space has also become an issue & with the price of hard drives still slowly crawling back to their pre-flood prices, they’ve still a long way to go before they’re as cheap as they once were. In response to a lot of this (and a few other reasons less pressing), I’ve been itching to get a few projects started. Rough details as follows:

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