[techmd]

So yeah for a serverWMC backend running windows 7 or 8, 4GB ram is fine. An SSD is always preferable for OS work since its just so much faster and better for reboots etc too however in your case if you are also looking for local recorded TV storage you probably should go for the 1TB disk. I havent used a mechanical HDD for an OS disk in a while now, and never will again. Im not sure if you can outfit a celeron NUC with a mSATA SSD for the boot drive and a 2.5" mechical HDD for the recordings? In my case I was able to use a local SSD for OS, and offload the recorded TV drive to my NAS over iSCSI (note that WMC cant use a network drive for recordings so it needs to "appear" like a local drive, which iSCSI takes care of).

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Lots for me to chew on, but that's the price of admission for someone like me to enter the htpc world. Regarding the part I quoted above, I envision the server NUC using the SSD for the Windows OS and then just USB attaching the 1 TB HDD. I would assume serverWMC could send all the WMC recordings to that HDD, but I've never ran it.