Purpose Of This Rig/Introduction
The primary role of this rig will be a home server. Essentially, the priority order of requirements are:
- Storage
- Media server (not HTPC)
- Printing
- Some non time critical video rendering
- itunes for an iphone, ipod and ipad
Given the price difference between an i5-2500 and the i5-2500K, we elected to go with the ‘K’ as it will give us more options later and also allow us to check out overclocking in the case.
From left to right, we have:
- 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Blue Low Profile RAM
- ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Gen3 Motherboard
- Silverstone CP06 4-in-1 Sata Power Adapter x2
- Intel i5-2500K Sandy Bridge CPU
- Fractal Design Define R3 Case – White with USB 3
- Intel Series 510 SSD – 120GB
- Corsair HX-650 Power Supply
- Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler
- WD Elements External 2TB USB3 Hard Drive
- WD Green 2TB SATA Hard Drive
- 4xWD Green 2TB drives
- Noctua NF-S12B FLX 120mm Fan
- Noctua NF-P14 FLX 140mm Fan
- Samsung 320GB HDD
- Gigabyte GTX580 with reference cooler
* Please note that the GTX580 was a late addition and included because we wanted to test the thermal properties of the Fractal Define R3 case as it has the sound proof material on the inside of the panels.
That’s right – no optical drive to be seen. As per the recent tech blog on optical drives, we’re not a big fan of the optical drives these days and as such, didn’t see the need for one in this build. There is a Samsung external USB DVD drive floating around the office that we will use for the rare occasion when we need to use optical media.
