My ex495 was already running WHS 2011 and had 4GB of memory but after I saw the Ceton USB 4 channel tuner I knew I had to upgrade the CPU too.

Purchased a Q8200S so I went from a dual core to a quad core and it does make a huge difference. The system is now very responsive.
Idle temps are in the low to mid 40's and full load tems are in the low 70's which I thought was high until I discovered that the max cpu temp is 100C
As an insurance policy I did modify the Bios so that the fans run full speed all the time but it probably was not necessary.

Mr UPS will deliver the Ceton sometime on Thrusday. After I get it installed, I will post CPU utilization while recording 4 (yes count em 4) HD channels.

Maybe I'm wrong but I was always under the impression that it's the playing back of HDTV that's the CPU/GPU intensive job. Actually recording the stream to disk doesn't take much effort just needs lots of space..... But maybe I'm wrong....

Would be interested to see what you report back on once you test it out...

I've been holding off on installing my Q8400 as it's not the "S" type so will only do it if I really need to...

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EX490 with 7TB storage

OK after much playing around its working. Right now recording 2 HD shows, watching 1 HD show and watching 1 normal show. Cpu is at 5 to 6 percent. Guess I did not really need to do the upgrade.
I thought I could configure WMC to record to the WHS but for some reason it's not.
I still need to see if I can watch live and recorded TV from the XBox but for right now things are going well.

How did you get it to work on windows home server I couldn't find the drivers to make it work.

Eclipse