Help me build a Home Server

Hey all,

I'm in the process of doing reasearch on building my own high performance home server to store files, and run various services like MyMovies, internal website,etc...but it will mainly be used to store my ripped DVDs and be served to my HTPC via MyMovies server.

Here is the list of components that I have come up with so far with reason why I picked it right below it:

CPU: AMD Opteron 1216 Santa Ana 2.4Ghz Socket AM2 Dual-Core $112.99
Reason: The server motherboard I picked is AMD and this seemed like a good priced Opteron chip.

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-LR AM2 Nvidia Nforce Professional 3600
$194.99
Reason: I picked this motherboard first because is under $200 and second because of the wide array of slots, PCIe, PCI-x and PCI. As well as integrated video,etc.

Memory: Kingston 4GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC
$129.99
Reason: Good price for registered ram. Kingston is a good brand.

Raid Controller: Areca ARC-1130 x12 SATAII
$669.99
Reason: Heard and read really good things about this card. Performance is good while price might be steep but I think the flexibility and performance are worth it.

OS Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB
$38.99

Raid Drives: x10 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB$139.99ea
Reason: I have had good experience with Seagate and seemed like most balanced performance. 5 year warranty is also a huge plus.

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-1000HX 1000W
$259.99
Reason: I'm still not sure if I need this much power but I went on the high side to make sure. Again I have had good experiences with Corsair and 1000W seems more than enough.

Optical Drive: SAMSUNG Slim 8X DVD±R DVD Burner Black EIDE/ATAPI
$45.99

Case: NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case
$289.99
Reason: Heard good things from folks here at AVS. Has lots of room and allows me to greatly expand while keeping the same case. And of course nothing that I have seen beats the price.

Total: $3,142 + $55.94 (Shipping) = $3,198.76

I would be using either RAID 5 or RAID 6. Leaning towards RAID 6 since it adds the ability for 2 drives to fail. Planning on using Windows Server 2k3 maybe 2008 if I see that drivers work. Like I said I will be using this server to do a lot of things storing my movies,music, pictures, do some encoding, internal web server for me to play around with, etc..

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!
Agman

Well you gotta understand is a full hardware raid controller with its own upgradable memory. Is not the kind that its all software based and makes the CPU do the calculations.

I'm planning right now on using either Windows Server 2003 or 2008. The reason being because of the drivers for the raid card and the tools they provide for windows. Money is an object since this is probably as much as I would spend on it. But I'm just trying to get really good quality parts that allow for expansion and room to grow in the future.

I'm already a member of technet. I signed up for $100 :-)