2014-08-13, 02:35
(2014-08-13, 01:47)aaronb Wrote: I bought a Gigabyte Z87 board, but buying today I'd go with Z97. Everyone has brands they like, I usually stick with Gigabyte and Asus. Make sure you get something with enough SATA ports and a good LAN chipset (i.e. Intel). For a home media server there isn't many other things to worry about mobo-wise, just need something stable that will accommodate your drives. Eventually you'll run out of SATA ports, so to plan long term you'll want to think about how you would add more drives, PCI-X SATA card, etc.
Hard drives, I like the WD Reds and Hitachi. It's a matter of when and not if they fail, try to mix up brands or batches of drives since drives from the same batch might all fail at the same time. Definitely get a SSD for the system drive, with enough space for everything you need. Plex can take up a lot of space, I went with a 120GB SSD. Intel, Samsung, or Crucial. Samsung EVO drives are great.
You'll want a case with good cooling and room to grow as well. I got an Antec with space for 6 drives, and a 5-in-3 cage that uses three 5.25" slots since I don't need those in the server, so 11 total. I've seen a lot of good reviews of the Fractal Design R4, that holds 8 drives, but only has two 5.25" slots. You can also go with an external eSATA box, Newegg has a few from Rosewill and Sans Digital. I have one of each of those attached to my old server and they work well and keep the drives cool. You're running 4 drives through one eSATA connection, but I have not noticed any issues with that.
Cool, that's all very helpful. So, here's what I'm thinking. Happy to hear everyone's comments!
Case: Thermaltake Urban S1 MicroATX
CPU: Core-i5 4430 (3.0 GHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x8 GB
OS Drive: Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
Storage: 2x4TB WD Red
PSU: Rosewill Capstone 450 W 80+ Gold
CPU Cooler (not sure if this is necessary, but I want the system quiet): Noctua DH-14
Optical (for Blu-Ray storage): LG 12x BD-ROM
CableCard Tuner: Ceton InfiniTV 6