What’s in the Box?
The box contained the Ultimate WHS 2011 box (as selected) along with some manuals, a PC Specialist guide, the WHS 2011 software (it’s preinstalled), power cables and other bits specific to the selected motherboard.
A Closer Look
This motherboard supports the latest Intel second generation Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 processors in the LGA1155 package, with memory and PCI Express controllers integrated to support 2-channel (4 DIMM) DDR3 memory and 16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes.
The Fractal Array R2 case is brilliant (which is why we selected it for the Ultimate WHS 2011 box). We reviewed the R2 case a few months ago.
The Ultimate WHS 2011 box contained 1 SSD and 2 hard drives.
We opted for the WD 2.0TB drives – two in fact, in a RAID 1 configuration.
The primary OS drive is an Intel SSD 320 series drive – its only 80GB, but that is more than sufficient for WHS 2011.
I thought the OS drive had to be a minimum of 160 Gig ?
You can use a cfg file during installation to set certain parameters, including bypassing the 160 GB drive check, which in this case is what PC Specialist did. It doesn’t affect your install.
Just curious – why the high end cpu, the intel I7? What does that buy you on a server that say an I5 or even an I3 would not?
The main reason was to build “the ultimate WHS 2011 box” and to have a box that would last quite a while and do any task I wanted, such as streaming, video coversion, running additional applications, etc, and the small cost addition to get the fastest processor seemed in line with what we were trying to do with the article. Obviously you dont need an i7 if you are not planning on doing some of the things I mentioned.
Wonderful. What’s the energy consumption? Why do you need video and audio?
hi Ivan, audio and video are available on the motherboard, but you dont really need them. As for the energy consumption I’m afraid I dont have that information.
Hi Andrew,
I also have the same motherboard P8H67-I deluxe. After installing WHS 2011, there are 3 unknown devices and 1 PCI simple communication controller that are missing drivers. Do you know how to resolve that?
The machine came preinstalled, so I assume they just used the drivers on the CD. You could also look for Windows 2008 drivers as well.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the quick reply. I first tried with the CD that comes with the motherboard but it is some Asus software suite that only works with Win 7 (or xp, vista etc) not with WHS2011. Anyway I ran it in a Win7 OS and found all the missing items. Now its all resolved.
Thanks!
Glad it’s all sorted 🙂 As for the Bluetooth driver, it might be worth contacting Asus to see if they can help.
ops sorry for double post