So, after giving it a lot of thought and having recently given my desktop a major upgrade, I have a few spare parts laying around which I'd like to use for a HTPC or a storage server built. (preferably the latter due to budget).

 

With that being said, I want the server to have a minimum capacity of 4TB (shouldn't need to exceed more than 2 or 3 drives, future upgrade plans may include stocking up to 6TB so leaving the option available would be ideal.)

 

I need it to be silent, very, very, very silent. as it'll be placed in my master bedroom, in a very airtight cupboard at that, the heat and noise coming from it should be as minimal as possible.

 

Size! As mentioned above, it'll be sitting in a cupboard and with that comes space limitations, I'd rather not run a full blown tower or even midi case, I've been thinking more along the lines of micro ATX ( ITX worth considering?) or a racket could potentially fit if the budget doesn't otherwise allow for the build.

 

My main concerns aside, the server will be primarily used as network storage, I will be potentially using it to stream media to my AppleTV2 to or even setup a DLNA service to use for my other streaming arrangements. Apart from that, it will be nothing but a datagrave.

 

As of the parts I mentioned earlier, I was able to salvage a

Intel Duo Core E8500

ASUS P5K

4x 2gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800

And 2 Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives (7200rpm) which I currently have installed in my desktop, though can sacrifice them to the server if required, but I figured may as well get cheaper and slower drives to save up on power consumption, also 7200rpm for a storage server seems a tad excessive.

 

Also I'd possibly be able to run sabnzbd and sickbeard on it.

 

I realize the above specs aren't nearly optimal to what I have in mind, but wherever one can save money I guess, eh? Regardless, I wouldn't mind ditching all of the above if necessary, but would much prefer to use those and save money on other parts.

 

My current budget is at around 250$ total.

The CPU/MB/RAM you have are more than adequate for UnRAID. 2 WD Caviar Green 2TB (one for parity) plus the 2 1TB drives you have would give you 4TB of usable storage and come out to $232. Considering shipping, that doesn't leave you near enough for the power supply and case, but you can come close. There are some decent PS/case combos for around $40, but I don't know what your space constraints are. You should have no problem coming in under $300.

The CPU/MB/RAM you have are more than adequate for UnRAID. 2 WD Caviar Green 2TB (one for parity) plus the 2 1TB drives you have would give you 4TB of usable storage and come out to $232. Considering shipping, that doesn't leave you near enough for the power supply and case, but you can come close. There are some decent PS/case combos for around $40, but I don't know what your space constraints are. You should have no problem coming in under $300.

 

Sorry, should have mentioned the budget does not include harddrives. My primary focus on this build is to get something small and super silent out of it, which can be easily upgraded in the next few months. Which is why I'm not entirely inclined to the motherboard/cpu as it's simply.. too big and power consuming and wouldn't fit my needs. I need something that consumes near to zero power in idle and doesn't produce any kind of annoying fan sound that'll rob me off my sleep.

Little update, decided to settle on:

 

Case: Silverstone Milo ML03

PSU: BE Quiet 430W L8 Pure Power CM ATX 2.3 (Wanted the Corsair Builder Series CX430 V2 430W ATX 2.3 initially but I honestly can't tell if it's just misleading or if there's two versions going around, the ones I can find in european stores are all ATX 2.2 as opposed to 2.3 and none of those seem to be modular, which is a big requirement for the case, I need all the airflow I can get I'd imagine. Also corsair's site directly states its non-modular, makes it seem all too shady and decided on the be quiet instead as I built it into a friend's desktop the other day and felt it's a really decent PSU, also just about the same price as the Corsair)

Motherboard: Asus P5QPL-AM Sockel 775 Mainboard

GPU: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 Grafikkarte (Required as it'll be hooked up via HDMI to my AV/R)

CPU Fan: Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev. B

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (already owned ; If the time comes may OC it to around 4.1Ghz if I ever feel the CPU isn't holding up anymore or living up to its full potential, have had it OC'd the entire 4 years I've had it running in my Desktop in for but I just don't know yet what the air-flow/heat situation will be like in the HTPC/mediaserver)

RAM: 2x Corsair 2gb DDR2 800 XMS2 (already owned)

HDD: 2 TB WD Caviar Green (Will be getting two of those for now, potentially later on upgrade to a 3rd and even 4th if required)

Case Fans: be quiet! Shadow Wings (2 of those, I *really* don't know what the heat will be like, which pretty much scares me the most, perhaps get those two as PWM with a fancontroller if I find enough space to fit it in, gotta have the parts infront of me first to really be able to judge, but as of right now.. I have those 2 sitting here so may as well see how it goes, they're quite silent as is and not going for the full speed but rather "mid" as be quiet describes should do plenty.)

WLAN USB Stick: D-Link DWA-140 Wireless N USB Stick (300MBit) (Because cable's are just iffy, Have used this stick prior and it ran flawlessly on Debian/Ubuntu and even Fedora systems, wouldn't get any faster datatransfer out of lan cable as is, so why bother! )

 

 

I plan on using the Boxee Box remote, as it works just brilliantly with XBMC

 

All in all, I'm exceeding my above mentioned budget, but not my much, if you take out the HDDs, CPU and Ram I'm still somewhere in the 270-300 area which is just about what I had in mind. I'm confident the system will be plenty enough to be used as a HTPC, not storage server directly, but will do just nicely for media purposes, the CPU is still quite the powerhorse and outperforms the majority up quad cores (up until the i series) which should tackle 1080p blu-rays without any issues whatsoever. I wont be using an Optical drive as I personally see no use for it, I have all my Blu-Rays stored locally and thus eliminate the need to... well, get up and insert/eject them! (yay, lazy person.) Also kind of takes away a bigger chunk on the total price.

I haven't entirely decided yet what I'll be using as an OS drive, but most likely will be running it of a USB thumbdrive or SD card, time will tell.

Hold on a second here. Unless you're going virtualization you will not be able to use your unraid server and your HTPC as the same device. XBMC will not run on unraid. Or are you saying you want to have a storage server that does not run unraid?

Hold on a second here. Unless you're going virtualization you will not be able to use your unraid server and your HTPC as the same device. XBMC will not run on unraid. Or are you saying you want to have a storage server that does not run unraid?

 

I'm aware of that and I intended to run an unraid server at first but decided I'd not need the massive amount of storage and would be better off running a HTPC-Server. With that being said, it'll run debian, possibly fedora and XBMC as mediacenter.

I think you will have a bit of a heat dissipation problem in the closed cupboard with this setup.

The mentioned MB and especially the Graphics Board and CPU - surely if you are going to OC it.