I agree, but now I made up my mind and all HW is on its way.

Yes, the server will run few hours a day, so hopefully mostly as you say I'll pay for idle, provided I configure it correctly!

Hi azazel1024, and thanks for the links! I would personally seperate file serving and HTPC duties, but that is me. If I had a bigger house, I would agree. but living in a small apartment it doesn't make sense to have two boxes. The only thing I "worry" is that it would be cheaper (in terms of electr...

Yes, that looks clever -- but you will need all the fans to be pwm. Your case fans are not. Hi Mike, actually I think that's not the case. If you look here you can see than it's meant for only on PWM fan (the CPU one). Actually after thinking a bit about it I found the problem with this setup: if y...

YES. This is a bad idea. I would not run more than 2 at most. Fan headers on most mobos are quite limited in their current capacity. When you turn on the power, the surge could burn out the circuit. The only fan you really need to be thermally controlled (and not really even then) is the CPU heatsi...

Hi, I got the case and I realized that I will have three fans (2 for the case + 1 for CPU) and the MB has only two connectors... plus, I read here : The H55-ITX has two PWM fan headers but unfortunately the one labeled SYS rans all fans connected to it, both 4-pin and 3-pin, at full speed. The board...

4G is overkill... unless you use ZFS. Maybe you'd be OK with half as much but a forum member said it was unsafe to run ZFS if you don't have a lot of spare RAM. I haven't tried it myself. The slowest CPU of that generation is way overkill for a NAS. So there's no reason not to pick the cheapest. It...

So, I decided also the last bit of my configuration. The HDs will be the new SEAGATE BARRACUDA GREEN ST2000DL003 for various reasons: I found problems for both alternatives I had (Samsung HD204UI and SAMSUNG SPINPOINT F4 HD204UI) - the Samsung HD204UI had some issues not so long ago: http://sourcefo...

alfonso -- did you check our SFF Silent Home Server Build Guides? PC-Q08B was used there... with excellent results. Minor "modifications" were applied. start reading here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Home_Server_Build_Guide this is the essence of the 6-HDD build: http://www.silentpcreview....

alfonso -- did you check our SFF Silent Home Server Build Guides? PC-Q08B was used there... with excellent results. Minor "modifications" were applied. start reading here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Home_Server_Build_Guide this is the essence of the 6-HDD build: http://www.silentpcreview....

Most really small cases cannot be quiet while housing multiple HDDs. You should think through on what your priorities are: small size or low noise. They are mutually exclusive at this point in time unless you're prepared to do a whole lot of custom modding. Among the cases you list, the LL PC-Q08B ...