VARN

I do not understand this: If I have a 500W and only use 100W is the 400W difference going somewhere?

I looked around and the only limit I could find is 128 PB because of the BIOS. Since this is a 750W power supply and the other one was going to be 560W will this use more power?

Well I have this computer: ASUS P5N32-E SLI Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2 Antec Sonata III Black Antec Truepower New 750W Modular Power Supply BFG GeForce 8800GTS Should I just use this for the server and get another for general purpose? What should I change to make this use less power?

Ok never mind about the hardware raid, seems too complicated. Based on the feedback I changed the case. Fractal Design Define XL Black Seasonic X-560 80PLUS Gold ASRock Z77 EXTREME9 Intel Core i7 3770 Quad Core Kingston 16GB 2133MHZ DDR3 This should come to about 1065 before tax. I may have to put something else on this to rip blurays and dvds and convert them, I do not see anything on the plugin list to do that.

•What is your budget? $1000 without drives •How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? 15 drives 3 to start •Is expandability important to you? If so, what's your long term goal? long term goal is 15 drives. •Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)? No •Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? This includes drives. No •If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up. The parts I have in mind are: Norco RPC-470 4U Rackmount Server Case Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3 3X5.25IN to 4X3.5IN Drive Bay Convertor Seasonic Power Supply SS-560KM Western Digital Red 3TB Western Digital WDTV Live Streaming Media Player I plan on setting up as a raid 5. I am having trouble choosing a motherboard; If some drives are pluged into the motherboard and some into a raid card can they all be on the same raid array? Are there any problems putting all 15 drives on the same raid array? These drives have sata3 6Gb connectors I guess I need that on the motherboard? Should I just get a basic motherboard and a good raid card? I will need to transcode on the fly, does that requires a video card? I am planning on putting another harddrive in separate from the raid for converting media or anthing else I may need. Any suggestion are appreciated I am very new to this.