Re: More help with home server upgrade...

["Stuart Poulton" <stuart.poulton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul,

Have you checked the 3ware compability tables ? Although I've not yet had a
problem with a 3ware card and motherboard.

Stuart
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Gale" <groups@xxxxxxx>
To: <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 12:33 PM
Subject: [ukha_d] More help with home server upgrade...


Can someone give me a hand speccing up my new server? It's going to be
running W2K3 R2, Exchange server all the other bits n bobs + 1 TB RAID 5
file store in hot swap backplane. I currently have a dual 1Gb PIII machine
which is OK but I've never trusted the reliability of compatibility of it
and the chipset etc. So probably want to go for a modern board and CPU.

The CPU fan needs to be reasonably quiet and power consumption as low as
practical (what with all the HDD's in there!!!). Hence I was thinking Core
2
Duo on a desktop mainboard (no ECC ram). Should I really be looking at
something else? I think Xeons are too expensive???

This is the list so far but needs a bit of work. I've settled for the
Compucase rack and Chenbro SATA backplane, WD RE2 HDD's (because they got
such good reviews - performance, heat, noise wise) x5 for the RAID 5 array
and 2 x mirrored 160Gb WD RE drives for the O/S.

Mainboard     Asus P5WDG2-WS Extreme i975X, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800,
SATA I / II, SATA RAID, ATX scan 1 £147.39 £147.39
CPU          Core 2 Duo E6300 dabs 1 £106.36 £106.36
RAM             1Gb Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel Kit
Overclockers 1 £59.95 £59.95
PSU              Existing 20 Pin PSU? £-
Rack case Compucase S411 4U Dabs 1 £69.41 £69.41
SATA backplane Chenbro SK335 SATA Hot Swap Mobile Rack 5 Drive Xcase 2
£109.00 £218.00
CPU cooler Zalman CNPS9500-AT Aero Flower (Socket 775) CPU Cooler
(HS-020-ZA) Overclockers 1 £28.95 £28.95
SATA RAID card AMCC 3Ware 9590SE-8ML SATA II Hardware RAID Controller Kit
8-port scan 1 £319.99 £319.99
HDD 500Gb Western Digital Caviar RE2 500GB 5000YS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
(HD-102-WD) dabs 3 £140.50 £421.50
HDD 160Gb Western Digital Caviar RE 160GB 1600YD SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
(HD-105-WD) Dabs 2 £39.02 £78.04

Any server builders out there care to comment on this approach or anyone
recommend anything else (mainly CPU / m/b wise)???

I'd really appreciate your thoughts as I'm starting to go round in circles
now!