Hello everyone,
I just wanted to post here to add a data point for others as I upgrade my server, and install WS2012E to add to the wealth of knowledge that is on this forum. I'm having some issues with my upgrade, and will post information here in hopes it helps someone down the road.
Forward
I have a stock HP MediaSmart EX485 (Intel Celeron 440 and 2GB RAM) with all 4 bays full (1 x 1TB WD Green, 2 x 1.5TB Seagates, 1 x 2TB WD Green EARS). The E6600 CPU I am using was from a desktop PC I had built in 2006 and since decommissioned. Before starting my server was happily running WHSv1 3.0 for years.
WS2012E Installation
I placed my server system drive into an Intel based x86-64 desktop to do the WS2012E install from a DVD. I opted for this installation route over the others (MediaSmart VGA debug board, unattended Windows install) as I do not have a VGA cable for my server but had an extra x86-64 computer that could do the heavy lifting. The installation went as smoothly as any other Windows 8 install (very easy compared to Windows XP and WHSv1 IMO). You can see what your in for on this Youtube video here (there are probably better ones but this was my reference). Note that after the install it will ask to connect to the internet to get updates. I did this step on my desktop as well. At this point I also made the registry edit to remove the necessity to have my clients join the domain as I think it's overkill for my application. After all the updates/reboots were completed, I powered off the desktop and removed the server system drive from the desktop.
CPU Upgrade
I have installed an Intel E6600 (Intel Core2 Duo Processor E6600 (4M Cache, 2.40 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB)) processor following the Youtube video here by Damian Kidd. Pretty straight forward, especially if you have ever worked on the internals of a computer before. As other's have said in the comments, definitely reapply thermal grease to your processor before putting the heat sink back on.
When cleaning out 5 years of dust, I saw some weak solder connections on the capacitors on the back plane so I trued them up before reassembling.
I did not mess around with any BIOS settings to support the new processor ... just plug and play.
System Drive Installation
Before adding data drives back into the server, I plugged the system drive in and booted up the server to make sure there were no issues. Everything booted up and I was able to RDP into the server right away. I let it sit on for a while just to make sure everything was running well with the fresh installs.
During the install process you needed to set up a domain, server name, and administrator account for your server. You will need to use these credentials to RDP into your server at this point. For example if you called your domain 'Zion', server name 'Matrix' and your administrator name is 'Neo', you will need to connect to 'Zion/Neo', not 'Matrix/Neo' as the later will not connect. Just an FYI.
Drive Pooling
As a WHSv1 user, I really got used to the simple drive pool brought about by Drive Extender. I read a lot of negative feedback about the WS2012E built-in solution (Storage Spaces), and opted to try out Stablebit's Drivepool. In my option, the software seems pretty mature, and even though support for WS2012E is only currently available in the beta release, I think it's a good contender. Drive Bender is another solution for this, but I have not tried that software.
I then added all my drives to the server one at a time. I emptied one drive and added it to the pool, then used Teracopy Portable to copy all the data from my drives DE folders to the pool. I used Teracopy for this task so that it does a CRC verification on all my data before I think about formatting the drive to add it to the pool. No one wants to lose data! It's also free, supports Windows 8, has a simple interface, and logs warnings/errors. I have used AllwaySync on a USB drive for this in the past, but it's a little overkill (and not free if you don't already have a license). After hours (~6 hours per drive) of copying and checking, all my data was pooled.
Drivers and Software
After everything seemed to be working alright, I upgraded the Intel chipset and SATA drivers using the latest x86-64 software from their support site. I then finished the server configuration by setting up user accounts, placing shares on the drive pool, activating my internet presence and VPN, allowing Media Sharing, and scheduling a server backup. I also added Subsonic and followed Drashna's tutorial for setting up a Reverse Proxy in IIS.
Then bad things started happening ...
The Issues
After starting to install and configure various programs on my server (Subsonic, IIS, backups) the server has become unstable. Every 10-30 minutes it will randomly restart itself. I am unsure right now whether it is due to the additional heat of the E6600, lack of power from the supply for the processor, or lack of RAM for a stable WS2012E build. I will be using some diagnostic software to try and figure out which one it is.
The system does not blue screen as I do not get any minidumps in my %SystemRoot% folder and there are no entries appearing in the Event Viewer. This leads me to believe that it's a hardware issue and not a software/operating system issue (one of the first 2 of my suspicions). I'm hoping it's heat related because I can probably do something about that. The processor should only draw about 15W-25W more power than the original processor, but that might add up to a significant heat value under load.
However I'm not going to discount the power supply being the culprit as the original supply is only rated at 200W and a PSU calculation of my server (CPU and HDs) has it running ~215W. Why they packaged the server with the PSU specification being ever so close to the top of the typical use model is beyond me 
. Really wish I had a Kill-A-Watt right now, but I place that in the same bin as the VGA debug cable.
Other Conclusions
In hindsight, 2GB RAM is probably not enough for WS2012E. While 2GB RAM is the minimum specification for the operating system, it probably won't let you do anything meaningful. When connected via RDP, and not doing much else other than looking at the Dashboard, the system is consuming about 1.6GB per the Task Manager; not much headroom for actually being a server.
While I might be able to get this server stable, I'm not sure it's really worth it in the long-run, and I might need to use my original desktop as the server instead. The price of a 4GB stick of RAM (~$90 USD) or a higher capacity power supply (~$80 USD) is too much to justify on old technology when I have a similar (albeit bigger) computer that can do the same thing.
Useful Links (Non-exhaustive)
Winsupersite: Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Connect Client PCs without Using a Domain
WeGotServed Forum Post: Hp Mediasmart Ex495 And Ws2012E
I will update the original post and add comments as I progress in debugging. Again, hope this helps someone!
-JesterEE