Well, I finally did it and did a in-place hardware upgrade on my WHS. I replaced my old socket 775, Q9850 (I gave my QX6850 to a friend recently), 4 x 2 GB 800 DDRII and P5Q pro system with the following:
I5 3450 with intel 2500 graphics
Asus P8Z77-V Pro motherboard
2x4 GB Gskill 1600 DDR III ram
The hole system booted on the first try and the only thing I had to do was install the missing drivers. The onboard intel NIC isn't running yet so I am using my PCIe Intel NIC right now. Great thing is, all my HDD problems have disappeared from the looks of it. No more errors detect on HDDs or drives dropping like flies. The next step is to replace my boot drive with the 1 TB SSHD I have.