can anyone help me please?
i'm new at this stuff ,and i want to build a home/media server with Microsoft WHS, it will be with my gear in my living room with these wishes :

decent Processor and memory gear.
quite,steady and reliable server.
at least 6 hot swappable hard drive bays.
I/O ports: USB 2.0 and and if possible supports USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 .
Gigabit Ethernet.
cool looking case (small and thin as possible, with no heat issue).

Because it .

I'm already building a separated HTPC with these specs. :

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H
CPU: Athlon II X4 630
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master (Geminii S) RR-CCH-PBU1-GP
Memory: G.SKILL F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ DDR3-1600 2 x 2GB Kit
Graphics Card: Radder HD 5670
HDD: i just want only one for the system
PSU: Enermax ECO80+ 400W EES400AWT

there is a web-site explaining how to build a WHS : http://computershopper.com/networking/h ... ome-server
but it didn't help me much, because it made me wounder if the GPU and DVD player are necessary if i'm accessing from the HTPC ?!

other thought : can i upgrade HP MSS to my wishes? or what can i upgrade in the HP MSS?
please help me, i'm REALY confused .

The HP MSS is a good machine to start out with. It is upgradeable, expandable and easy to use and setup.

Yes the MSS is easily upgradable. I have 4GB of memory in mine along with a dual core 2.8Ghz processor. I've also expanded the capacity to forty Terabytes of storage.

Although that is not enough so I'll be increasing it to around forty six Terabytes soon.

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3TB MSS EX490(upgraded CPU-E6300(2.8Ghz dual core Pentium)),
4GB memory
57TB unRAID1a--49TB unRAID2--76TB unRAID3

Hello and welcome to the forums

I am confused by some of your post. Are you building an HTPC, and want an MSS or do you want to build an MSS? Knowing or understanding what it is you are trying to accomplish will help me (and others) to better answer your question(s).

Just off hand, I would place a DVD/CD player into any system I am building just so I do not have to mess with installing the OS from a USB device. A cheap DVD player is not much these days. I would also most likely use the DVD player to rip my movies at the server. Shifting the burden from my main PC to the server, also eliminating the transferring of data to the server. I would cut cost on any server in the gfx (GPU) department by getting the cheapest card I could find that was well supported (referring to driver support). Or better yet getting a motherboard that has integrated gfx. I would take the same approach for the sound card as I listed above with gfx card. Have you ever tried to boot a computer without a gfx card?

The HP MSS is a proprietary unit, so your upgrade options are slim. If you are willing to void the warranty you can upgrade the CPU as well as the RAM. In my opinion those will provide the biggest bang for your buck. You can of course add more storage to your system as well The components that you may find difficulties in upgrading, are the power supply, motherboard, GFX card, etc. etc.

Hope that helps some and please do not hesitate to post any other questions or concerns you may have.
Tom

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Have you backed up your data lately?

As mentioned already you can upgrade the MSS to an extent (Memory and CPU). With the EX49x you get 4 drives. You can then add a 5Bay eSATA enclosure, and numerous USB enclosures.

If you want to build small member RhinoEvans just built an interesting WHS around the core i5 and mini-ITX motherboard. If you go towards the end of the comments section you can see some pics that he linked to:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03 ... tx-htpc-2/

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

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