New WHS 2011 Build Help

[533watts]

Hey Everyone

I have a brand new WHS 2011 server that I just built a few days ago. From what I read WHS can do coupled with a few add-ins and media servers, I'm very excited. What I'm hoping it'll do when I get everything running good is have a centralized storage system, automatic backups for all the computers in our house, media server to transcode files and serve files on the fly to devices on the local network, and remote access everything WHS can do with maybe Mezzmo (Mezzmo's a whole different topic).

Here are the components of my server.

CPU: I5-4430
Motherboard: Asus H87i-Plus
PSU: I forgot which one but its a good brand
Separate OS drive: SSD 60GB Corsair
3 2TB drives operating in raid 5, 2 WD, 1 Seagate. 7200Rpms and 64Mb cache all
RAM: 8Gb Corsair 1600Mhz
I am using the onboard Raid controller and Lan adapter, all Intel, good for my needs.

As you can see this is a pretty decent system, one I'm hoping will last me several years with great service. So now onto my issue; Whether I connect to the server directly through 1Gb LAN or wirelessly through a nighthawk router through wireless N I will always get slow or extremely inconsistent speeds. Connecting to the server directly with a Gigabit NIC on both server and client plus a newish cat5e cable will give me great results for maybe a second then speeds drops down to almost nothing. Its interesting actually the connection will start off very fast in the high 80's or 90's upload then will drop down to zero, almost as if the connection has been lost for a duration of maybe 30-60 seconds then reconnect at a much slower slightly more consistent speed. I know my little "array" is capable of much more for transferring files internally from OS SSD to the Array gives me beautiful results, with read speeds in the high 200's and write in the mid 100's.

The things I believe I've eliminated to be the cause are the client computers. I've tested my connection between both laptop and desktop all with the a 1GB connection both with same speeds.
The router, connecting to the server through it or directly gives less than pleasant speeds.
Cables, I have one long oldish Cat cable connecting my desktop to the server directly, and one short newish cat cable connecting the server directly to my laptop. same poor performance.

So it seems to be an issue with my server, I've tried going into device manager->Network Adapters->Intel® Ethernet Connection I217-V and changing some advanced driver properties like Jumbo Packet and Offload settings, which actually seems to have helped a little. But no more than changing my Fallout.ini to give better performance.

Any ideas what the issue might be or what to do? I actually don't know for sure I'm connecting to my server from my laptop directly with a successful 1Gb connection, I just know both are capable and the cable is good. How can I check to make sure on that? But speeds sometimes start off in high 80's or 90's something a 100Mb connection couldn't do so it probably is.

Well any help will be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Side questions:

As far as media servers are concerned what do you guys use? Seems like Plex is popular and Mezmoo too. Transcoding on the fly is important to me and Mezmoo seems to be a good choice.
Power consumption. How does one set WHS 2011 to automatically sleep and wake during certain hours? Or set idle power consumption to as low as possible? I've been going into settings menus for what seems like forever and I've only seen bits and pieces for that answer. I might have another question but these are the biggies. thx again.