Best music server for the money

Hifimaniac, very nice system. I have the emm lab dac2x as well. You are right most computers are not built for sound. You can put your ear right up to mine while running and you hear nothing. NO FAN, no noise from drive or CPU or power supplies etc. My cpu is a Core i7 processor which your builder put in their $5000 unit. I have eight 3.0 USB and eight 2.0 USB not that that matters. Not criticizing but yours is also a computer and I am certain operates and sounds great. But mine has more and costs less. I do not mean to imply mine sounds better. Just completely silent and fast. Very fast. Assuming we have the same exact down load what comes out of our computers is exactly the same less or plus any computer created noise. The real differences occur down stream. All the best and I really like your set up.

Had it and dumped it! Sounded thin and 2 dimensional compared to my Krell SACD player.

Maybe someone can explain to me the point of starting a thread and then just walking away from it? The OP posts his request for help in April and then never even comment or thanks folks for their input, and then 4 months later it gets revived??

Hi!
Value for money is such a relative term. Probably a cheap laptop would be best value for money to 95% of the population...

Anyway, wanted to chime in about the DIY route. I am certainly not a computer savvy person. I use computers for work every day, but my biz is far and away from anything computer-related. But I'm DIY inclined, and at times brave...and at times stupid! :-)

Last February I built my first computer EVER. I did a lot of homework to understand what were the parts I needed to source and trusted I would be able to figure out how to assemble them. And sure enough it wasn't that difficult, with a little help from the suppliers.

My server: Streacom FC8 Evo fanless case, Intel S1200KPR mobo, Xeon 1265l v2 processor, Crucial 8GB ECC RAM, Crucial v4 64GB SSD for OS and PPA red slim SATA cable, WD Green 1TB HDD for music fed from independent SMPS (cheap) and generic SATA cable, PPA USB v2 card, lab linear PS. Windows Server 2012 R2, AudioPhil's Optimizer, JRiver MC 19, JRemote. No moving parts, except the music HDD that actually sits outside the case.

I didn't find the heat-exchange assembly on the Streacom that hard. Sure one needs to be careful and think before acting, but it wasn't super hard.

And this was the first time I installed the operating system on a computer too! A very good aid for this, if using Win Server 2012 is the guide for the Audiophile Optimizer, that takes you step by step on doing so. And it worked perfectly for me.

Computeraudiophile.com has the guides to assembling the CAPS, one of which needs a fanless case similar to the one I used. That's also good reference reading.

All in all, if you enjoy DIY and are brave enough to live through the uncertainty until you see things work - not a minor factor! - I'd say is not THAT hard!

And since you were DIY, this offers endless options to try optimizations thru battery power, etc. I have tried some but would be too long to get into.

Oh, and sound is fantastic and operation is rock-solid. Apparently these server motherboards and operating system are super stable.

Doesn't Windows Server need 160GB of HDD space before you can install the OS? How did you install it on a 60GB SSD?