New to WHS, but not to building PCs. I built one in 2004 and one in early 2008. The 2004 is OOS, but still functional. The 2008 is still my main PC, and both were built on a budget.

The 2008 build is a Phenom 8650 Toliman on a stock clock, mated to a XFX GeForce8200 board with 2x2GB PC1066 and running Win7. As I was looking at what I wanted to do, I got to thinking that this might make a nice little WHS in the right case, and I could spend my money on buying better guts for my main PC. Really, my only expense would be a couple of big drives and the OS.

I don't have very big needs, or at least I don't think so. I want a reliable backup for my movies and music (currently taking up only one 1.5TB drive - I have no plans on ripping or streaming BD) and pictures. I use my 360 as a MCE, and aside from horrible performance on the menus from being wireless, have had good results. I think using Media Browser may slow it down further. The WHS will go in a central location and be hardwired through a new router or a switch, either being full Gigabit. I also want to add some sort of solution for a bedroom, either a unit like a Popcorn Hour or XBMC on the Xbox.

Just wondering if this would meet my needs or not. The 200GB drive I have now for the Win7 OS would probably go to the WHS OS.

Thoughts? I'll also be posting a thread about the software in the appropriate forum. Thanks.

Oh, and I guess I need some recommendations on a nice quiet case and some fans to go along with it, to fit the micro-ATX mobo. The current case isn't appropriate. I imagine I'll be going with 4 1.5 or 2TB drives. I don't imagine I'll need much more for a long time. The mobo has six internal SATA connections.

First off Welcome.
The hardware you specified should be able to work, if you read the spec on the EX470 your hardware easily exceeds that.

You mentioned using wireless, your a brave man I haven't seen good result wirelessly except with really low bitrate conversions that end up looking like very bad bootleg videos.
Glad to hear your going with a gigabit network, if you can get your xbox plugged into it even though it will only do 100mbs you should see better performance.

And I do believe some folks have had luck pre-converting their DVD's/Blu-rays to either MKV or another format directly supported by the xbox for playback.

The other playback options are playback appliances like Dune, PopCorn hour, some media tanks
and of course my favorite HTPC a small form factor PC with HDMI output.

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Here is a budget build I wrote about for WHS:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/04 ... test-vail/

As Chasrobin mentioned the hardware seems fine

As far as using your Xbox as an MCE, I assume you are using it in extender mode from your desktop PC? If after you build your WHS you don't want to have to keep your desktop PC on to use your Xbox you can install a transcoding software on your WHS which will transcode on the fly your videos for playback on your Xbox (of course though doing it this way you will lose the nice MCE UI on the Xbox).

The Popcorn Hour and Dunes make excellent choices as secondary players. Dune just announced a new line of players (http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/08 ... a-players/). If you dig around as well you will see my writeups on the PCH C200/A200 and Dune BD Prime. I have an Xbox360 and PS3 but only use them for video games as I find there are too many limitations when it coming to video playback

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Cheers,
Damian

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

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Thanks for the responses so far. I think one day I will grab a nettop for the HDTV, but for right now the Win7/360 MCE has done a fairly good job. I used to use Transcode360 and MKV files, but that went to crap a couple of months ago and went to .m4v files converted using Handbrake. I do indeed like the slick UI of Media Browser, but I'd be willing to try something different. I don't have a VGA or DVI input, but I could always try to output via HDMI directly from the server and use a frontend there? I certainly will consider a Dune or Popcorn for the back bedroom.

As far as the wireless goes on the 360, I honestly haven't had any stuttering or frame rate issues once I switched to .m4v. I wasn't expecting a whole lot with DVD rips, but the G network handles them fine (probably because I really don't use WiFi for anything else) and they looked pretty good on the ole Plasma. But I know going wired will certainly help. I'm using the Universal setting in Handbrake off of a VOB rip with DVDFab. Maybe I'm lucky.

I'm currently searching for a small form six bay case, and of course I would have to build the new PC first. I just am unsure if the 8650 would be suitable for the WHS, I thought I saw here someone saying that they'd much prefer using an Intel chip, and of course it's 95w. I could conceivably downgrade to the 8250e, though. Right now I'm getting around 37c idle and 60c at load.

Thought I should through this out there:
The 2004 build is a Athlon 2500+/A7V600/1GB/9600XT. Can I do anything with that, besides recycle it?

I don't think you need to downgrade unless power consumption is a concern.
And even then you could do what I do and use lights out add-in to power the server down automatically if not used for awhile, or use S3 sleep mode to works well too.

If you don't want to keep your win7 box on all the time to serve up the media connect
you can add your Video share to the xboxes monitored folder list and the movies will show up there.
You may need to play with the xml files to get sleeve art to look right.

You may also be able to use something like mymovies manager to handle that, and keep a list of your movies too.

I tried using xboxes a couple years ago but found it to be too time consuming and Microsofts limitation on that hardware too frustrating.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram