One of my holiday-season projects is to pack 16 400GB or 500GB hard disks into a single (wood!) cabinet... I'm still trying to figure out how disk controller situation will work (probably 8 ports onboard + 8 on a PCI/PCIe card), but I really want to ditch some complete systems if it's possible for me to do so.
1 Cooler Master Stacker $145.00
4 Supermicro CSE-M35T-1 SATA Enclosure $520.00
5 Scythe S-Flex SFF21D 120mm Fan $75.00
20 Seagate 7200.10 750GB SATA - OEM $6,800.00
1 Areca ARC-1260 PCI-Express 16-Port $930.00
2 Seasonic S12-600 ATX12V $290.00
1 Gigabyte GA-M61PM-S2 $75.00
1 AMD Sempron 2800+ AM2 $44.00
2 Corsair ValueSelect 256MB DDR2 $60.00
Total: $8,939.00
Capacity: 15TB
$/TB: $595.93