So,
you’re thinking about building your own home server based on
Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Home Server and want some pointers as to
the best hardware to use. You’ve come to the right place! Here I’m
going to take a look at the components that you’ll need to put together
a robust, reliable and economical home server. Windows Home Server
The first thing that you need is a copy of Windows Home Server, and
that brings us straight up against licensing difficulties. There’s no
such thing as a retail copy of Windows Home Server, so you’re going to
have to take the OEM route. This means no tech support from Microsoft
and it also means that your copy of Windows Home Server will be bound
to the motherboard that you’ll use as the basis for the system. You
can pick up an OEM copy of Windows Home Server for between $169 and
$189 (so shop around). CPU and Motherboard
Once you have the software, it’s time to get the hardware sorted out.
I’m going to start off with the CPU and motherboard. The good thing
about the Windows Home Server operating system is that you don’t need
monster hardware to run it on. Remember, the main purpose of Windows
Home Server is to move data about, something that’s not all that system
intensive. Throwing too much hardware at Windows Home Server will only
waste power and generate excess heat. The Microsoft spec suggests a
1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 160GB hard drive, and throwing more
gigahertz or RAM at the OS makes little difference to the data transfer
performance. As the basis for a system I’d suggest a modest CPU such
as the AMD Sempron 3200+. You could go for something beefier like an
Intel Core 2 Duo but all you’ll be doing is chucking away money so that
you can chuck away more money easting electricity. Take my advice and
stick with a low power consumption CPU (the Sempron 3200+ comes in 62W
and 35W flavors, so try to get the 35W version if you can).
When
it comes to choosing a motherboard for the home server, you’re looking
for something cheap, something that doesn’t have fancy features (such
as 7.1 surround sound or Firewire and so forth) and something that has
plenty of connectors for hard drives (ATA, SATA or both, depending on
what drives you’re going to use) and a network connector (preferably 1
gigabit). You’re also not going to need loads of PCI or PCI-e slots
either since little or nothing is going to be hooked up to them.
Again, don’t blow dough on fancy stuff. However, it might be a good
idea to look for a board with on-board VGA (I’ll explain why later).
If you got money burning holes in your pocket you might as well spend
it on fireworks because spending it on a fancy board sure won’t give
you a faster or better home server. Gigabit, MSI and ABIT all make
boards that will be ideally suited to home server application. Heatsink and fan
When it comes to cooling your CPU, you have some choices. You can
stick with the stock cooler if you don’t care about sound levels. The
stock coolers will work just fine under the stresses of running Windows
Home Server. However, you might want something quieter (stock coolers
are anything but quiet) and if you’ve chosen an AMD Sempron CPU you
might want to check out the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, or the Akasa
AK-876