Hardware for Building Home Server

[Amaresh]

I am pretty confused regarding a small problem. I need to build a home server by myself and thus did a small survey regarding the esssential necessities required for home server and got a tremendous choices to selcet from. Thus i don't know what actually requires in building a home server.
Please provide some views regarding this

[Rawko]

I think you should go for this one:

[LIST=1][*]AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ “Brisbane” [*]GIGABYTE GA-M61PM-S2 Motherboard [*]1GB A-DATA DDR2 800 RAM [*]LITE-ON IDE DVD-ROM Drive [*]Rosewill R6421-P ATX Mid-Tower Case [*]SeaSonic 330W Power Supply [*]2 x Seagate Barracuda 400GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drives
[/LIST]

[deoWo]

Windows Home Server

The first thing that you need is a copy of Windows Home Server, and that brings us straight up against licensing difficulties. There’s no such thing as a retail copy of Windows Home Server, so you’re going to have to take the OEM route.

CPU and Motherboard

Throwing too much hardware at Windows Home Server will only waste power and generate excess heat. The Microsoft specification suggests a 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 160GB hard drive, and throwing more gigahertz or RAM at the OS makes little difference to the data transfer performance. As the basis for a system I’d suggest a modest CPU such as the AMD Sempron 3200+. Take my advice and stick with a low power consumption CPU (the Sempron 3200+ comes in 62W and 35W flavors, so try to get the 35W version if you can).

When it comes to choosing a motherboard for the home server, you’re looking for something cheap, something that doesn’t have fancy features (such as 7.1 surround sound or Firewire and so forth) and something that has plenty of connectors for hard drives (ATA, SATA or both, depending on what drives you’re going to use) and a network connector (preferably 1 gigabit). You’re also not going to need loads of PCI or PCI-e slots either since little or nothing is going to be hooked up to them. Gigabit, MSI and ABIT all make boards that will be ideally suited to home server application.

Heatsink and Fan

The stock coolers will work just fine under the stresses of running Windows Home Server. However, you might want something quieter (stock coolers are anything but quiet) and if you’ve chosen an AMD Sempron CPU you might want to check out the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, or the Akasa AK-876

RAM

512MB of DDR2 is all you need.

Graphics

Now you might remember that I said that it might be a good idea if you choose a motherboard with on-board VGA. This will make the home server cheaper and it means that you don’t need a separate graphics card. Again, the cheapest solution will be just fine.

Hard drives

When it comes down to what to buy, the main concern is capacity. If you’re looking at 160GB drives I’d be looking at the Hitachi DeskStar 7K160 which consumes as little as 5.9W at idle. If you want 500GB drives then the Samsung SpinPoint T is a good drive to choose.

If you want to super-size the hard drive capacity, you’re not going to find better than the Western Digital “GreenPower” WD10EACS 1TB drive which exhibits incredibly low power consumption both at idle and when working.

Optical drive

You’ll need one to install Windows Home Server, but after that it isn’t going to see an awful lot of use. Get a cheap one for the job in case you ever need to reinstall.

Case and PSU

My advice is to keep things simple. When it comes to PSU, you’re unlikely to need anything above 300W, but you’re going to need a PSU that can reliably deliver the power that you system needs and deliver it reliably for months and years to come.

[RoninBlade]

1. Motherboard:
   ASUS M2NPV-VM
   
   BIOS upgrades can be down with a USB memory stick so no need to have any other OS other than Solaris.
   
   I've not tried the audio, IEEE 1394a port or the graphics card beyond just starting X. Everything I have tried to use has worked on Solaris with the exception of powernow.
   
2. CPU:
   AMD Athlon 3500+
   
   I've been having trouble with power now. When the system runs at 2GHs it crashes with memory errors. Colleagues who have the Athlon 3800 CPU report it works fine. This is irritating as I only chose the single core CPU to get power now sooner rather than later.
   
3. Memory:
   2 * 1Gb 240pin 800Mhz DDR2 RAM
   
4. Disks:
   2 * Seagate Baracuda ST3320620AS 7200rpm 320Gb SATA disks.
   
   You have to remove a jumper on the drives to get these to run at full speed.
   
5. Case:
   Antec NSK1300 Case MicroATX
   
   A good case which will hold 3 31/2” disks as well as a DVD drive. However it really shows just how good the mechanics on Sun Systems are. You get what you pay for.

[Fabian]

• Processor:
  
  Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5410A l
  Model: BX80574E5410A
  
• Cabinet:
  
  Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
  Model: VA8000BWS
  
• Power Suplly Unit:
  
  PC Power & Cooling T12W 1200W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
  Model: T12W
  
• RAM:
  
  Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Fully Buffered Dual Channel Kit Server Memory Model CT2KIT51272AF667
  Model: CT2KIT51272AF667
  
• Hard Disk Drive:
  
  Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
  Model: ST3500320AS
  
• Video Card:
  
  EVGA 256-P2-N761-AR GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
  Model: 256-P2-N761-AR
  
• Optical Drive:
  
  LITE-ON 20X DVDA?R DVD Burner Black SATA Model iHAS120-04 - OEM
  Model: iHAS120-04
  
• Motherboard:
  
  TYAN S5396A2NRF Dual LGA 771 Intel 5400 SSI / Extended ATX Server Motherboard
  Model: S5396A2NRF