Critique my Windows Home Server build

hoorah

Senior member
Dec 8, 2005
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So this is the build I put together as a result of this thread here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2098212

I spent much of the morning on newegg piecing this together. I'm sure there is room for improvement, especially on price as there seen to be a ton more options than I remember the last time I did this, especially with neweggs combo deals. Man, there are a ton of those...

Power Supply: Antec Neo Eco 520W - $100 with Antec 300 Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.458433

Case: Antec 300
I picked this one because it had a nice combo deal with a good PS (antec 520W for $100). Tool-less HDD installation would be nice, but not a deal-breaker. The one below is an alternate.

Alternate Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119152

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD - $80
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394
I dunno, seemed decent. I went AM3 because of this super cheap CPU.

CPU: Sempron 140 2.7Ghz single core 45W AM3 - $37
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103698

Memory: Muskin 2GB DDR2 800 - $47 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820146118

Hard Drive: WD Caviar Black 1TB 64mb Cache - 5 year warranty - $85
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136533

I'm on the fence about the necessity of the WD black drive. I wanted something reliable and fast for the OS drive, so I really don't need a full TB, but it wasn't that much more and WHS should be able to use drive pooling to add the rest of it to the storage pool easily.

This build will also be getting the 2 x 1TB data drives that are coming from the previous server as well as the CD/DVD drive. So, in total, it will have an OS drive + 2x 1 TB SATA + CD/DVD

On the other hand, I have 2x 1TB drives in my local NAS (which is the off-site backup for this file server) and I may pull one of the 1TB drives out of the NAS, use it as the OS drive for this build, and replace the empty NAS spot with a 1.5 or 2TB drive that newegg has on sale. So many options....

Total (including shipping, using the antec case) ~$365



Thanks for the critique!

Oh, BTW, I know I didn't include WHS on the price sheet. I will use XP Pro temporarily until the new WHS is released.
 

hoorah

Senior member
Dec 8, 2005
755
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Too late, pulled the trigger. I got lucky, right before purchasing Neweggs shell shocker deal was the antec 300 with the antec basiq 480W power supply. Looked good to me. Total was like 340 something with a DVD burner I need for another system.

Look forward to putting this thing together.
 

boomhower

Diamond Member
Sep 13, 2007
7,228
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For your uses it will work fine. Black drive is overkill because everything is going to be limited by the network and the OS drive doesn't need to be fast because of the limited amount of work it actually does.
 

hoorah

Senior member
Dec 8, 2005
755
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For your uses it will work fine. Black drive is overkill because everything is going to be limited by the network and the OS drive doesn't need to be fast because of the limited amount of work it actually does.


Right, I just picked the black drive because it has a 5 year warranty vs the other drives. Does that mean its more reliable vs. just paying more for extra warranty? I have no idea.

Also, with Windows Home Server I can use the rest of the 1TB (outside of the 100GB for the server) in the drive pool.
 

imaheadcase

Diamond Member
May 9, 2005
3,850
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Whatever you do, during install ENABLE AHCI. I just found out the hard way, to enable some sata ports on motherboards you have to have AHCI enabled. Lots of motherboards just use sata by default. So now i have to get a sata controller card to add more drives because you can't install AHCI drivers after the OS is installed on WHS. ugg
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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From your component selection you're clearly on a budget, but for what it's worth I would have done things slightly differently. Along with dropping a Black for a Green, I would have gone with a slightly different CPU/RAM/Mobo combo; a 785G DDR3 mobo and 2GB of DDR3, and an Athlon II X2 processor. The RAM difference is both for better performance and so that you're not paying top dollar for DDR2 in a year or so when you want to expand the box to 4GB, and the dual core processor comes in handy whenever you want to grab a file while WHS is toiling away at something else. The RAM/mobo exchange likely would have been price neutral, and an X2 processor would have been around $20 more.

Still, I would expect this to be a solid WHS box.:)
 

hoorah

Senior member
Dec 8, 2005
755
18
81
Whatever you do, during install ENABLE AHCI. I just found out the hard way, to enable some sata ports on motherboards you have to have AHCI enabled. Lots of motherboards just use sata by default. So now i have to get a sata controller card to add more drives because you can't install AHCI drivers after the OS is installed on WHS. ugg

DOH! I read your message and completely forgot. Enabled AHCI about a week ago and it completely crashed the server, will have to reinstall WHS. Not a huge deal, I'm still testing things out with it. I have my dad running on a temporary box right now and its working out for him until we setup the new WHS box. The hardest part of the whole migration is going to be setting aside time to drag the box down there and start the file copy process.
 

hoorah

Senior member
Dec 8, 2005
755
18
81
From your component selection you're clearly on a budget, but for what it's worth I would have done things slightly differently. Along with dropping a Black for a Green, I would have gone with a slightly different CPU/RAM/Mobo combo; a 785G DDR3 mobo and 2GB of DDR3, and an Athlon II X2 processor. The RAM difference is both for better performance and so that you're not paying top dollar for DDR2 in a year or so when you want to expand the box to 4GB, and the dual core processor comes in handy whenever you want to grab a file while WHS is toiling away at something else. The RAM/mobo exchange likely would have been price neutral, and an X2 processor would have been around $20 more.

Still, I would expect this to be a solid WHS box.:)

I got the black for the additional warranty since it was for a 'customer'. In 3-5 years if the drive goes bad, he'll be happy to hear he's getting a new one, and really won't notice the cost difference now. As for the DDR2/DDR3, I would have preferred DDR3 but was looking only at boards with lots of SATA ports, and DDR3 with lots of SATA were getting into the really high end stuff. For what this box is going to do, by the time I need 4GB I'll probably be building a new box anyway and turning this one into a router/firewall or something depending on how fast his business grows.

In retrospect, I do wish I went with the dual core for $20 more. I'm not really on a budget, I just jumped at the super low price of the sempron and knew it was way faster and more power efficient than the stuff he was running now, so it was win/win and I added it to the cart. I had initially thought that any speed increase would come with a big power increase. I didn't realize that there are dual core AM3s that also only use 45w.

I've been running the system through tests these past few days and with only 1 HDD and 1 DVD it idles at 50W :)