thanks guys for discussing and making me aware of the microserver
bought one today, equipped it with xfx geforce 210 (have to remove the bracket to make it fit) and set it up with windows 7 64bit (driver for windows server 2008 r2 works fine)

gonna buy a bluray drive and ups next month
this is gonna be my download box/nas/htpc/print server

RM919 from mcts group (the HP shop across the street from Lowyat)
was rushing for time yesterday so didn't feel like browsing inside lowyat to get cheaper deal

it comes with usb keyboard+mouse and also dvdrw drive

one thing to remember is that even though the microserver has 4 hdd slot, 1 is already taken by the included 160GB.

i bought 4 2tb disk only to realize this when setting it up
of course you can move the 160GB disk to the optical drive bay as some already did, but i'm planning to use the bay for a bluray drive.

i didn't buy any sound card
the xfx g210 card i bought has an HDMI port, and also HDMI audio (NVIDIA high definition audio)
if you connect it to an LCD TV, shouldn't have any issue to get sound coming out of the box

hahaha for the 1 extra hdd, maybe i'll just plug it in to my desktop, or connect it to the box through eSATA in the future if space is running out

RM300 each from Viewnet, additional RM10 each for 1 year 1to1 exchange
MTCS shop is the shop with HP logo across the street from Lowyat's main entrance, really hard to miss it

suns8630: with ddns and the correct port fowarding, you should be able to access it from the internet

jchue73: regarding the chipset, i just used the built-in Win7 driver. tried installing using the driver i downloaded from HP's website but i don't think any of the driver got updated as in devmgmt.msc driver provider still shows Microsoft. NIC driver installed just fine though.

btw, i didn't set any raid/spanned volume as i can't afford to lose all my data in case of disk failure.
do tell if any one of you know how to set the drives to raid5 on Windows.
for now i just mount the drives on a single folder for easier sharing and access.

microserver only support raid0/1, and spanned volume through windows
raid 0/spanned volume array will fail even if a single disk failed, so its not an option
raid 1 waste disk space, so its a no either
that's why i asked if anyone knows how to set raid5 on the microserver (without buying additional card of course)

and i meant i can't afford to lose the data figuratively, its not like i'll die or stand to lose a lot if it does happen