The pieces apart
Just over three years after I installed my first linux server at home, I decided to replace my old AMD Athlon XP based server with a faster and newer one.

I started compiling a list with components, with these requirements in mind:

• All components should be as modern as possible: no ATA anymore, no floppy disk and as less PCI card as possible. I tried to replace them in favor of SATA, memory card reader and PCIe.
• I still need at least 2 PCI slots for my TV card (Hauppauge PVR-500) and my ISDN card
• Everything well supported under Linux
• Able to host a lot of disk space. My MythTV recordings, mp3 collection and digital photo archive keeps growing and I had to be more and more creative to fit everything in my old server. So, the more disks the better
• Enough computing power to transcode video quickly (I tend to recode a lot of Myth recording to be able to view then on my Nokia 770)

This was the result:

• Antec P180B Case
• Antec Neo HE 430 Power Supply
• Asus P5B Deluxe Mobo. This board supports
• Intel Core2 Duo E6600 CPU. The fastest CPU available for a reasonable price. Fits very well on my transcoding requirement
• Artic Freezer 7 PRO CPU Fan
• G.E.I.L. 2 GB DDR2-800 RAM. I plan to upgrade to 4G, but prices are falling really quickly.
• Asus N6200TC video card (entry model since I will not attach a monitor anyway)
• 5x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB HD (I bought an additional one later)
• Samsung SH-S183A DVD-RW. SATA CDRW. Curious how well supported that is under Linux...

Curious how this worked out during the installation? Read on!