a definitive best parts for WHS thread?

[GbrNole]

i've searched countless threads and read gosh knows how many reviews and it's time for me to finally take the plunge and move from my (t)rusty old XP box to a shiny new WHS box!

my current xp install acts strictly as a server and while it does a very good job serving tv and video to my HD 100's it requires me to restart the damn thing every other day to keep it stable.

i already have a copy of WHS and i have various parts i can throw into my future WHS box but the only stuff i'm really interested in recycling are my:

PVR-500 cards (2 of them)
AverMedia A180
Hauppauge 950 USB stick
Bluray drive (strictly for streaming)
DVD drive (so i can stream 2 discs at a time)
500gb WD sata drive

i'll also be reusing my existing case and power supply so i'm left with the fun task of choosing a new motherboard, processor, couple more HDD's, ram and possibly a temporary video card.

the biggest problem that i'm running into right now is choosing the best mobo for my needs. the one i keep leaning toward is the gigabyte ep45 since it offers the min number of PCI slots i need (3), firewire for cable box channel changing and a very robust build. I also have a spare E5200 fresh in the box that doesn't hurt! on the flip side i'll need a video source for setup and don't have a space PCI or PCI-e card available.

alternatively i can switch gears and go in the opposite direction and use AMD however the only motherboard i can find that seems to fit my needs (3 or more PCI slots) is the Asus M4A785-TD evo board.

i'd prefer to keep the power consumption down a bit but that's really not all that important since i've been plugging away 24/7 with a power hungry P4 3.2E for ages!

any advice on STABLE motherboard (and ram for it) selection would truly be appreciated.

Thanks,
Nick.

[bsquarewi]

Get a MB with lots of SATA on board. Since it sounds like you are planning on using up all your PCI and PCI-e slots on Tuners, then you may not have room for a SATA PCI card. Once you start ripping DVD's and BluRays to your server you can just keep adding HDD's as needed.

There are a few Gigabyte boards with 8 SATA and Windows 2003 Server (WHS) drivers. Whatever board you get, make sure it has Server2003 drivers. I upgraded my WHS to a GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 with a Wolfsdale 3.0ghz about a year ago and it has been very stable (minus some issues I had with the Hauppauge HVR2250 drivers and 4GB ram)

Oh, and one of these cases:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811219021

[hingepin]

Make sure you check the compatibility of your tuner cards with WHS. I've tried a couple and had no luck with anything but a 2250. For some reason I had issues w/an HDHR and never figured it out and the wife got fed up and forced me to using FIOS DVR.

wegotserved.com has a thread on compatible cards, as well as on here.

[najames]

I have a Q6600 on an older Asus P5E-VM HDMI mATX motherboard running WHS/SageTV and it is rock solid. RAM is likely some cheap Supertalent DDR2 800, hard drives are all Western Digital, 2x750GB and 2x1TB. I made some changes and rebooted it recently and it had been up for 97 days as I recall.

Currently, I only use it to record off a HDHomerun and use 3 HD200s. This thing is nearly flawless. The server has been flawless, now has about 1.5TB of video on the drives. The HD200 we use the most has needed to be reset about twice during this time. Next weekend I am hopefully going to try to add in some other stuff and see if I can wreck it all.

I would look on this thread for hardware recommendations.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post17591247

Ditto on lots of SATA, slots, etc. Don't forget to get a PSU with a lot of SATA connectors. I only buy Corsair or Seasonic PSUs.

[Skirge01]

I have quite a variety of hardware in my server, all working just fine. I had an Avermedia M780 which worked fine, but now I have 2 HDHRs and 2 HD-PVRs. Basically, if there are drivers for Server 2003 or XP, you should be fine. Use the server drivers first, if available, but XP drivers should work just as well.

[lpitman]

I also have had good luck with my GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard and a E8400 Wolfsdale 3.0ghz CPU and OCZ 4Gb Ram. I did use the on board SATA for a Raid1 (mirrored) system disk's and added a separate SATA Card to support the 1Tb HD's in a Norco RPC-4220 Case.

[wayner]

I have WHS running on a P5Q mobo and a E8400 CPU. The mobo has 8 SATA ports. Other things to keep in mind - you may not be able to use your PVR-500s with 4GB of RAM as I know that the PVR-150 drivers aren't happy with 4GB. For hard drives I certainly wouldn't buy anything less than a 1.5TB today. Why do you want a DVD drive - just rip everything to the hard drives?

My system also didn't like having two PVR-150 cards, you may have the same problem with your PVR-500s. You may want to think about upgrading your tuner cards since PCI seems to be dying out - you have noted that it is becoming hard to get mobos with lots of PCI slots.

[GbrNole]

the dvd drives are just for the instant gratification of being able to watch a dvd for the kids if their friends bring over a movie or something. i was gonna go 3gb tops on the ram possibly just keep it simple with 2gb.

i wish the dang ep45 had onboard video just for setup. don't have a spare pci-e card.

[GbrNole]

ok to recap i have coming:

gigabyte ep45-ud3r
2 gigs of corsair ddr2 800 ram
a pair of 1.5tb wd green drives
asus geforce 8400 pci-e fanless graphics card really just for setup

i have a wd 500gb sata drive that i was going to use as the system drive but i was thinking about getting one of those wd re3 drives for that purpose?

[KarylFStein]

I've been using WD RE-class drives almost exclusively for a few years now up until slightly before last Christmas. Over that period, I've had failures with 2 RE2 drives and 1 RE3 drive (50% failure rate for both versions now that I think about it--not good I guess). My first two RE drives (RE1 I suppose, but the sticker just says RE), are in the computer I'm using right now and haven't failed since day one even though they're the oldest of the bunch, (jinxed it there I guess...)

The one thing I can say is that the WD RMA process for RE drives has been exceptionally fast and painless. That alone has been worth it to me. I don't know how failures compare to other drives. If you're concerned, just pick up a second, low-cost 500G drive as a spare to rebuild to in case of problems. If you're somewhat paranoid, get an identical drive and put them in RAID-1 as a system disk. If you like the idea of a longer warranty and fast RMA process, (for the WD RE-series, they'll ship a replacement right away instead of waiting for the return first--not sure how that compares to other makers or non-WD-RE drives), then maybe a pair of RE3s in RAID-1 are what you

[enthilzha]

My WHS box has been rock solid. I used a mix of spare parts I had on hand and filled in the rest:


AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2
4GB DDR2
2 x Western Digital 1TB WD10EACS (OS + Drive Extender)
1 x WD 750GB drive (Sage recording)
2 x Plextor 402U
1 x HDHR


The only thing I wish I had was a network based standard def tuner so I could move the whole WHS server into a virtual machine. To the best of my knowledge no one makes one.

[ChaOConnor]

Originally Posted by enthilzha

The only thing I wish I had was a network based standard def tuner so I could move the whole WHS server into a virtual machine. To the best of my knowledge no one makes one.

What do you mean by this? Like VMWare? What would the advantages of this by? Just curious. Thanks!