Final Thoughts
I really love this box – partly because it is fast, very fast, and partly because I built it with PC Specialist as part of the challenge we came up with to build the Ultimate WHS 2011 box from their various available options. And when I say “I built it..” I mean I helped choose the components and they did all the work. Oh and it also looks really good!
The communication with PC Specialist throughout the section, build and delivery process was excellent.
You may look at the spec and think we went a little overboard – perhaps we did, slightly, but then again, there really isn’t anything I can’t do with this box now. I can happily use it for streaming, backup, restore, remote access, media conversion and so much more given the high spec. And don’t forget that today’s high spec is tomorrow’s medium spec and next years low spec!
Noise wise it is fairly quiet – I could happily leave it running on my desk and not be distracted.
The number of ports on the back of the box makes it very expandable. The 2 x 6GB SATA port are being used for the 2 x 2.0TB drives, but there are still a number of 3GB SATA ports spare on the motherboard and there is plenty of place in the R2 case to add additional internal storage as well.
I can highly recommend using PC Specialist to build your Ultimate WHS 2011 box, or even if you just want to buy some components, they are definitely worth contacting. They certainly have just about every option covered, and at a reasonable price as well, with excellent communication and service.
I really like that they provide a 3 year warranty as well – a lot of places these days only provide 12 months, and when you are spending this sort of money you want some piece of mind.
All in all this really is my Ultimate WHS 2011 box!
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