SPCR

My goal was to buy a pre-built Sandy bridge media server that would have the horsepower to transcode 1080P HD movies/shows on the fly, but with low idle power consumption, and have the option of using Intel Quick Sync later on when more software support was available.

I have been waiting to purchase the Acer AC100 microserver with 4 hot plug trays, but this never came to the market almost after a year of being announced.

I ended up buying a Lenovo ThinkServer 1105-20U:
Xeon e3-1235 quad core, eight thread, 3.2ghz (similar to i7-2600)
HD P3000 GPU with quick sync
4gb ram (single stick)
DisplayPort ++
280W 80 plus bronze psu
space for two 3.5" HDs

I installed a single platter 500GB 7200rpm hard drive until I can locate 1TB platter 2TB hard drives that I can run on Raid-1

With the included Lenovo EasyStartup disc (which pre-configures the os and preinstalls all up to date drivers), it was a breeze to install windows server 2008 r2.

Without any bios tweaks, the system is running at 21 Watt idle, and sub 100 watt cpu load.

I am going to play with the bios for the next week to see if I can turn off any integrated controllers and bring idle down to 17 watts hopefully.

System is very quiet, runs cold.

The only reservation I had was the fact the system had only two non hot plug hard drive bays, but I can live with that for now.

I wonder if it would accept adapter trays that take from 2-4 2.5" drives in a 3.5" bay.

Some more info on the TS130 here:

http://ts130.blogspot.ca/

The machine is indeed quite quiet, but the included WD RE4 is a noisy and fast enterprise drive.