[scphantm]

Oh all the servers in my data center are bsd. I've been using it daily for the past 8 years. I know it well. I just prefer ubuntu at home cuz of it's much cleaner package system. Bsd can be a bit of a bitch on that front.

I'll do some more research. Hell I may put solaris on the damn thing just for something new

[ph77]

ok, let me throw this one out there. im adding to this server 20 2tb hard drives in a software raid (probably 6), with the case we are building capable of adding 20 more when then first array fills up. im using pretty much the same HD setup as the BlazePods from backblaze. does the added overhead of the parity calculations for the raid array change the opinion that an i3 is good enough?

Don't know about this scale of raid much and personally I never liked raid (I simply use linux LVM and manual mirrored backup).
But if money is not an issue, you could go with a low profile i5 with TurboBoost (i5 2400s) and a more advanced server board that has more expansion options and dual nics (Intel/Supermicro/MSI).
Processor comparison here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/intel-2100t-2400s

[P.Kosunen]

Oh all the servers in my data center are bsd. I've been using it daily for the past 8 years. I know it well. I just prefer ubuntu at home cuz of it's much cleaner package system. Bsd can be a bit of a bitch on that front.

http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

Debian port with FreeBSD kernel... Sounds perfect.

For ripping disks:
http://www.makemkv.com/

Why hassle and lose quality with re-encoding for few bytes saved?