Pedro_Mann

Peter...thanks for the parts. I like your thinking here and will add them to my parts list over at:

http://theaverageguy...1-with-drobo-s/

I think I already had this case listed. I will have to compare boards. Edit...the board is an ATX board and the case is ITX. Need something smaller. What do you think of this board? http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813157247


Will most likely end up going with an IcyDock enclosure for the OS Drive. Check the post for that configuration.

Congrats on the first post. I hope you will continue to post here at the Home Server Show!

Yeah, I noticed after I submitted that motherboard wouldn't work. The asrock MB is perfect, has all the bells and whistles with no legacy BIOS.

I was looking at the case some more and noticed it does have a half height slot available so you can expand a little too, how about a dual port nic so you can run pfsense in a vm? I tried to find something that would fit and wasn't crazy expensive. I'de check it against HCL first, and I suspect it is probably an intel chipset. Not positive though.
http://www.neworldit...e=412648-B21-NB $84
or
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16833106015 $139

For the sake of completeness, I was looking at this case, before you mentioned you wanted to go small. I subscribe to the bigger is better category and this bad boy can host a 6 drive raid array + ssd on it's own. I guess that's the point of the drobo though (Probably cheaper than dremeling out the guts of a real drobo though)
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811352019 $189

ASUS E35M1-M PRO Fusion AMD E-350 APU $120

Should be plenty of power in the cpu to run WHS, plus the benefit of a little GPU power in case you ever want to repurpse this as an HTPC someday, or mess around with GPU assisted transcoding. Also included, USB 3.0 ESata etc. Don't forget, the ASUS boards support UEFI so you get the cool graphical boot menu as well as large hard drive support.

I was double checking my links and I realized I spec'd out a micro-ATX board which of course won't fit. Directly competitive is a Gigabyte board, although I dislike the gigabytes currently because they haven't gone UEFI yet.

GIGABYTE GA-E350N-USB3 AMD E-350 $120



This one is sweet, but probably overkill (Maybe the wifi could work with pfsense?)

ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion AMD E-350 $175

This is my first offical post, but I always love specing out build, so I thought I'de get involved. If I was to do a build for your specs I'de choose the following:

Antec ISK 300-150 $70

I've noticed many of the tiny mini-itx cases have external power bricks. It looks like this one has an internal power supply so that is a plus. Also, this thing will take dual laptop drives so a RAID 1 is possible with this case.

ASUS E35M1-M PRO Fusion AMD E-350 APU $120

Should be plenty of power in the cpu to run WHS, plus the benefit of a little GPU power in case you ever want to repurpse this as an HTPC someday, or mess around with GPU assisted transcoding. Also included, USB 3.0 ESata etc. Don't forget, the ASUS boards support UEFI so you get the cool graphical boot menu as well as large hard drive support.

Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 $50

Why go less than 8GB these days? Also, 1600Mhz is the sweet spot for the AMD GPU's since it is shared RAM. I was thinking about others like the Ripjaws which I have in my HTPC. I would be worried about big heat spreaders getting in the way in such a tight build.

HITACHI Travelstar Z5K500 500GB Qty. 2 $120

The hard drive is up for debate. I always like the highest density possible. This one is a single platter 500GB, which also makes it thin. And should run very cool, due to single platter design and 5400 RPM. Spec'ed out 2 for RAID just becuase.

Optical Drive ??

Just whatever you have laying around?


Total Price $299 with 1 HD or $360 with 2 HD's Not a bad price for a little server. What do you think?

-Peter