To give you an idea of the progression, even for a DIY machine, I will outline how I started with the first Supermicro machine I did and where it stands now.
The First WHS DIY that I did is Supermicro based with a rack mount 3U storage case with plenty of fans and 8 hot swap sata bays. I chose the supermicro PDSME+ motherboard because I got a good price on it and it was new. The first thing I had to do was quiet down the fans which I did with a Zalman 6 channel fan controller and with a Q6600 intel quad core 2.4 ghz processor, a large heat pipe cpu cooler, it runs very cool (30 C) and that's with the fans running around 2k. I used a Supermicro sata controller with 8 ports, so with 4 ports on the motherboard gives me 12 ports. I have 8 ports used up with the hot swap backplane and 1 with a slim DVD writer and 1 with a 1T WD GP in the second bay below the fan contoller to load apps on, etc. So far this setup is quiet and holds much potential.
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1. I ran with this configuration for about 6 months, using the 8 hot swap drives and the 1T drive for applications.
2. I then decided to run an SSD for the system drive and use all 8 hot swap drives for pool storage and the 1T drive for applications.
3. The next thing I wanted to do was change out the Zalman fan controller to put in one of Supermicro's 4 2.5 drive backplanes. This little change required me to change the 6 chassis fans to quiet PWM fans which wound up keeping the system quite cool even though they don't put out the CFM's of the Supermicro fans. It was actually cooler with the pwm fans than the slowed down 3 pin Supermicro fans and a lot quieter. It also required me to get another AOC-SAT2-MV8 card to drive the 2.5" backplane.
4. Since I had an extra 4 ports available on the MV8, I transfered the application drive to one of the 2.5" drives and put in another 4 drive 2.5" backplane.
I now have an SSD 60 gig system drive and the pool has available 8 3.5" hot swap drives, 7 2.5" hot swap drives and 1 2.5" drive for applications. The 2.5" drives use less power and are set up for SSD drives if the price ever comes down. The 2.5 normal drives are going up in capacity and down in price, so I'm not hurting myself with expansion.
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I picked up a Spectrum rack and modified it to handle the Supermicro chassis.
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So, for me, at least, a DIY WHS system is a never ending evolution.