I'm building a new NAS/all-around-server for my home. It will be situated in a living/work room, will run 24/7 so want to make it as quite as possible. Because of tight space, also needs to be compact. Budget is ~800$.
Target is to run Windows Server OS with multiple VM's in it. Will be mainly streaming/encoding/download (media) server during non-work hours and VM running server during work hours. I'm a developer and want to constantly switch between Linux/Windows/OSX, thus want to offload most of VMs to this server. In VMs I'm running various development tools, browsers.
I already have 2x WD Red 3TB drives for this, want a possibility to expand up to 6. No plans for dedicated graphics card at all.

Current component consideration:
Fractal Design Node 304 (127$)
Seasonic X-460FL 460W (186$)
Asus P8H77-I (119$)
Intel Core i5-3470 Ivy Bridge (232$)
CoolerMaster HYPER 212 EVO (38$)
DDR3 Kingston HyperX LoVo 16GB (2x8GB) 1600MHz CL10 1.35V (100$)

I live in Eastern Europe and unfortunately it's not that simple/cost effective to get stuff from SPCR lists.
I have some doubts regarding fanless PSU - it will be placed under hard drives and seems that it won't get any airflow in this case. Yes, I've seen SPCR review and it seems it can withstand anything, but still, will it feel good here? Another option for a PSU would be Seasonic G-550 (138$) (can't find any other Seasonic X-es around here, Enermaxes are only of high power and too pricy, no Kingwins here). Any opinion regarding X-460 vs G-550 in Node 304?
And also I'm considering whether i5-3470S would be better here, knowing that PC will run 24/7. But am not so sure about this, because as far as I understand, S only limits maximum power of processor and I don't think I'll be needing this maximum power all of the time. But if 3470S would definitely save some power, I'd go for it. Again, doubts..
Also I'm not 100% sure that CPU cooler will fit in this case. What do you think?

Thanks for any opinions.

It would be best if you could put it elsewhere. Hard drives make some noise and it's a server so it can be anywhere.

I have no experience with that HSF or that case (can you suspend drives in there?) but here's a couple of tidbits which may help:


Then get a PSU with a fan which doesn't spin unless it gets hot. But really, a very efficient PSU doesn't have so much heat to give away... which is why efficiency is particularly important. So you might be interested to know that:

They're sold as Superflower in Europe.


You'd have to look at actual measurements to determine what Intel achieved with this generation but S probably does a bit more. Sandy Bridge low-power quad-core models were measured as being slightly more efficient. But the difference was really marginal, hardly worth the lower power/$ ratio. A different motherboard might make more difference. I didn't check the specs of the various models out there but even if you need an Asus for the fan control features, there might be a model which doesn't support CPUs with more power draw than you need (less powerful VRM tend to be more efficient).

Instead of the Cooler Master 212 EVO, then why not a small blow-down cooler such as the Scythe Samurai ZZ? By going for a small-sized CPU cooler you would be more assured that it will fit in the case. It's probably easier to install the system with such a small cooler, too.

According to the SPCR review, it could easily cool an AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz (95 W).

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1049-page5.html

Your CPU is more efficient and won't dissipate as much heat as the Athlon II X4. And bear in mind that SPCR used CPUBurn, which makes the CPU dissipate more heat than when using any real application.

Regarding the case. I doubt that any small-sized mini-ITX case, with room for six hard drives, will be able to cope with the vibration from the hard drives. So I think it's irrelevant to choose a case based on this criterion.

Also consider the Seasonic G 360. Though not modular, it's 20 mm shorter (160 mm vs 140 mm). In some cases, this is much more important than modularity. For instance, this applies to the Bitfenix Prodigy according to the Anandtech review.