Newbie OS X Server hardware recommendations

[iPhoneiac]

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. After 27 years of PCs we converted to Mac about 3 years ago and now run an all mac household that includes a unibody Macbook, 2 Mac Minis, Apple TV, and 1 iMac which unfortunately fell to the famous, and un-acknowledged by Apple, ATI X1600 video chip problem.

 

I have been building PC's since the good old XT days so I am very comfortable with the idea of building a clone. As I get older though I have less patience for mucking around and have come to appreciate the beauty and value of Apple hardware.

 

So what am I doing here?

 

I have been playing with Boxee (www.boxee.tv) on Apple TV and our household macs for streaming internet video, archived movies, and music. To serve up all this media easily and efficiently I have decided to set up a 1U rack mount server to run a bittorrent client and an itunes server app. I am also looking to set up a Sata2 raid array, potentially in a separate rack mount with 3 or 4 new WD 2 Terabyte drives. With all the household PS3s, Macs and a Wii, I have run out of ports so I am also adding a 16 or 24 port switch to connect all this as well.

 

I can't afford an Xserve so I would like to build the next best thing from pc components. I do not want to go crazy building a dual cpu 16 core monster I do not need, I just want to get the best value for the money. A dual core setup or maybe even a quad core dual cpu is enough for me. The video card is obviously not an issue.

 

My question, finally!

 

What motherboard, cpu, and video card do you recommend for maximum compatibility and hassle free installation?

 

Budget is an issue but I will pay more for quality gear. Any recommendations on 1U server cases, raid drive cases, power supplies, combination router switches, wifi, and adsl rack mount equipment would also be appreciated. And before you suggest it, I am not interested in running any type of Microsoft based server, it's OS X for me or bust!

 

Thank you.