Procurement of hardware and introduction

Good Afternoon.

Over the next couple of days/weeks I will be deploying a Home Lab Using relatively cheap components to build a Test/Dev environment.

The main objective will be to check out some of the new features and benefits of the Microsoft Products.

I have purchased the following hardware:
- Intel Core i3 3220 Processor
- MSI Z77A-G43 Motherboard ( Bios Version 2.7, which does not work on ESXI5.1) [ Board to be swopped out for a compatible Gigabyte board TBA ]
- 32GB of Apacer memory
- 450watt Thermaltake Powersupply
- a Spare ATX case I had doing nothing.
- 2 x 1TB SATA 2 HDD
- 1 x 80GB Sata 2 HDD

I am hoping to setup the following technology  :

2 AD forests
    - Three AD sites ( Forest 1 ) [ sites: HQ and two Branch sites ]
    - Forest Root Domain ( Forest 2  )
    -ADFS
-IPAM for DHCP/DNS Management
-BranchCache
-Direct Access
-System Center Configuration manager
-System Center Operation manager
-System Center VMM
-Exchange server 2013
-Running Hyper-V 2012 nested inside VM.
-WDS

The Goal posts will change I see fit.

I will be using Vswitches together with vRouter software to emulate network infrastructure.
I still need to decide where the "internet" breakout will be for the organisation.

First step of the deployment procedure will be how to downgrade the BIOS from version 2.7 to version 2.5. Some G00gling led to people confirming that after the introduction of UEFI to the NIC , EXSI 5.1 does not pickup the NIC.