My Home Server Upgrade

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I recently decided to take the plunge and decided my home server really deserved a case rather than running on my dining room table so invested in new hardware for my Home Server.  I also upgraded from the 1GHz workhorse I was using to an almighty 1.2GHz system.  The difference is amazingly underwhelming, a testament to the low requirements of WHS I guess.

  • Jetway J7F4 Mainboard
  • 1GB RAM
  • 2TB Storage
    • Western Digital Green Power 1TB
    • 2x Maxtor 500GB
  • Chenbro WHS Case
  • SATA PCI Card (2xSATA)

I found these at mini-itx.com (other retailers available).  The impressive thing is the Jetway is fanless, runs at only 7W under full load and has dual gigabit ethernet.  The Chenbro is also really easy to install the hardware considering the size of the case and pretty quiet too, the big decider is the drives you use though the Green Power discs barely vibrate while active and those too run at 7W under load.  Between the mainboard and GP discs you could have a 4TB home server solution that runs at around 35W under full load.  Truly astonishing considering most desktop PCs have ~500W power supplies as standard.

Bottom line if you want to go it alone and make your own WHS, I couldn't recommend the above any higher.  For legal reasons the choice is yours however ;)

Jason