After building dozens of file servers ranging from the simple to the more complex for others and my lab, I decided to build a modest file server for myself, mostly to share movies, documentaries, and recorded sporting events for friends who are overseas and don't have access to a US-based VPN for the usual Hulu, Netflix, etc. I already have a backup solution in place for my daily driver desktop and laptop so I did not need this for my own backup purposes but figured friends could use it for backups if they wanted.
Here's the parts list:
Western Digital Black 500GB: $61 from the FS/T forums here. After installation of WHS 2011 there are about 400GB left for remote back up and general file sharing.
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB: $137 from Amazon. Newegg's HDD prices lately have been terrible compared to Amazon's; this same drive is currently $40 more on Newegg than Amazon.
Biostar H61-based ITX motherboard: $67 with Shoprunner through Newegg. I wanted something simple with Gigabit ethernet and front panel USB 3.0 support and the price was right.
G.SKILL 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 kit: $23, but had this kit sitting in a drawer so no OOP cost.
Intel Pentium G620 CPU: $70 - more than enough horsepower for WHS 2011, but Amazon didn't have the Celeron G530 stocked and I wanted to use up some Amazon credit.
Silverstone TJ08B-E case: $100, I think this is a good-looking chassis that is about as small as mATX cases come, it has front USB 3.0 ports and is inaudible with the front fan set to the lower speed setting. I always buy cases with repurposing in mind, and this is likely to be useful in case I want to upgrade my daily driver at some point.
Silverstone 500W fully modular PSU: $80 - this is the smallest (to my knowledge) fully modular PSU available, so again, could be repurposed to an ITX case. I had its matching short cable kit sitting in a drawer so I used that. Way too much juice for a file server, but again, repurposing...
WHS 2011: $49 - Mostly for the ease of use and free domain name.
Total cost: $587
Only issues were that during installation, WHS 2011 didn't have the Realtek 8111E NIC driver included so I had to download that from Realtek's website and manually install it. (Oh, the horror...) Also, initial transfer rates were poor - like ~200KBps on my neighbor's wifi (
), and navigation through the directories was slow as molasses. I went through and disabled offloading in the NIC's configuration, which solved that problem. Otherwise, no issues.
Idle power draw measured with a Kill-a-watt from the wall is 39W. Real world load power draw (four simultaneous connections) is 47W. This shouldn't have too much of an effect on my power bill. HDDs are in the mid-30s C and the CPU stays in the mid 40s C with the stock HSF under real world load.
Friend in Denmark reports download speeds of 600-700KBps, another in Germany is getting ~500KBps, and a buddy on the other side of Madison is getting ~800KBps.
Sometimes it's fun to build a simple system.
Here's the parts list:
Western Digital Black 500GB: $61 from the FS/T forums here. After installation of WHS 2011 there are about 400GB left for remote back up and general file sharing.
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB: $137 from Amazon. Newegg's HDD prices lately have been terrible compared to Amazon's; this same drive is currently $40 more on Newegg than Amazon.
Biostar H61-based ITX motherboard: $67 with Shoprunner through Newegg. I wanted something simple with Gigabit ethernet and front panel USB 3.0 support and the price was right.
G.SKILL 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 kit: $23, but had this kit sitting in a drawer so no OOP cost.
Intel Pentium G620 CPU: $70 - more than enough horsepower for WHS 2011, but Amazon didn't have the Celeron G530 stocked and I wanted to use up some Amazon credit.
Silverstone TJ08B-E case: $100, I think this is a good-looking chassis that is about as small as mATX cases come, it has front USB 3.0 ports and is inaudible with the front fan set to the lower speed setting. I always buy cases with repurposing in mind, and this is likely to be useful in case I want to upgrade my daily driver at some point.
Silverstone 500W fully modular PSU: $80 - this is the smallest (to my knowledge) fully modular PSU available, so again, could be repurposed to an ITX case. I had its matching short cable kit sitting in a drawer so I used that. Way too much juice for a file server, but again, repurposing...
WHS 2011: $49 - Mostly for the ease of use and free domain name.
Total cost: $587
Only issues were that during installation, WHS 2011 didn't have the Realtek 8111E NIC driver included so I had to download that from Realtek's website and manually install it. (Oh, the horror...) Also, initial transfer rates were poor - like ~200KBps on my neighbor's wifi (
), and navigation through the directories was slow as molasses. I went through and disabled offloading in the NIC's configuration, which solved that problem. Otherwise, no issues.Idle power draw measured with a Kill-a-watt from the wall is 39W. Real world load power draw (four simultaneous connections) is 47W. This shouldn't have too much of an effect on my power bill. HDDs are in the mid-30s C and the CPU stays in the mid 40s C with the stock HSF under real world load.
Friend in Denmark reports download speeds of 600-700KBps, another in Germany is getting ~500KBps, and a buddy on the other side of Madison is getting ~800KBps.
Sometimes it's fun to build a simple system.
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